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N°. VIII. 



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AN EXPOSITION OF 

VULGAR AND COMMON ERRORS 

ADAPTED TO THE YEAR OF 
ORACE MDCCCXLV. 

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BY THOMAS /BROWN REDIVIVUS, 

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WHILOME KNT. AND M.B. 

Secontf lEfcition. 




LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND, 

1854. 




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TO THE KEADEB. 

IN ancient times it was held as a matter of 
faith by many, that man's spiritual part did 
not go at once to its ultimate state of existence, 
but did undergo a kind of purification, by the 
passing from one body to another of a better 
or worse kind; until, being thus corrected of 
its earthly desires and propensions, it was fitted 
for its final beatitude. Pythagoras, it was said 
by some, had good recollection of the time 
when his soul was far worse bestowed than in 
that body wherein he preached temperance and 
virtue so effectually to the citizens of Crotona, 
as to raise that city at once to greatness, and 
its people to a merited superiority over their 
neighbours of Sybaris: — a body kept in such 
holiness and purity by its beatified inhabitant, 
that we may well believe it fitted for that re- 
surrection of the just, where "they that do well 
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; 
and they that turn many to righteousness as 
the stars for ever and ever." 



2 TO THE EEADEE. 

Good reader, I will not ask thee to believe 
that Pythagoras hath revisited earth under my 
semblance, albeit, my wish to amend the morals, 
and increase the wise knowledge of my contem- 
poraries, be not less lively than his; but merely 
to give me so far credit as to believe for the 
nonce, that the pen which doth now address 
thee, is that of Thomas Brown, whilome Doctor 
of Physick ; who began his inquiry into vulgar 
and common errors some two centuries back, 
and having laughed somewhat at the odd blun- 
ders in science made by the men of that age, 
hath now, hi return, somewhat to blush for his 
own. We are always wont to inquire anxiously 
what men of other lands have to say concern- 
ing us ; rightly judging that they who have 
been brought up in other habits will notice 
the strangenesses or excellencies of ours, with 
a sharper observation than that of one born 
and nurtured in the country; there is, there- 
fore, good reason to think that the opinions of 
a man of another age stepping onward into 
this, will not be without their value to such as 
can forget their own prejudgments so far as to 
profit thereby. 

Within the last two hundred years the very 
face of the world is changed; and he who should 



TO THE BEADEE. 3 

rise at once from his grave, passing through no 
intermediate stage, and look on the nineteenth 
century with the eyes of the seventeenth, would 
go near to expire again with amazement at what 
he saw; and would despair of ever, in the short 
span of one life, attaining to the knowledge of 
all the discoveries which have graced these later 
times. But let the same man go into society, 
and he will find things far less changed there, 
than, with such a change in all else, there would 
be good cause to expect. True it is, that there is 
more of refinement in expression and manners : 
but the unthinking many have gained, on the 
whole, far less from the deep-thinking few, than 
— taking a theoretic view of the case — might 
in fair reason have been looked for ; and the 
same error which my Lord Bacon doth so feel- 
ingly complain of in his time, remaineth very 
little corrected in this; namely, a " mistaking 
or misplacing the last or farthest end of know- 
ledge; for men," saith that wise writer, "have 
entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, 
sometimes upon a natural curiosity, and inquisi- 
tive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds 
with variety and delight ; sometimes for orna- 
ment and reputation; and sometimes to enable 
them to victory of wit and contradiction ; and 



4 TO THE EEADEE. 

most times for lucre and profession; and seldom 
to give a true account of their gift of reason, 
to the benefit and use of men : as if there were 
sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest 
a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for 
a wandering and variable mind to walk up and 
down with a fair prospect ; or a tower of state 
for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort 
or commanding ground for strife and conten- 
tion; or a shop for profit or sale; and not a rich 
storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the 
relief of man's estate." — In brief, learning is 
sought as the means to an end, — and that end 
is too usually a worldly one ; not for the love of 
knowledge per se; nor for the elevation of the 
soul, by the giving it strength of pinion to soar 
above the things of earth: neither if it settle 
down towards lower regions, doth it come, bird 
of paradise-like, radiant with the hues of heaven, 
to make us love the skies it hath left; but it 
descendeth the rather like the fuliginous par- 
ticles of the smoke which hath soared upwards 
for a time, dark and unlovely; with much talk 
of utility, but little of benevolent usefulness. 

Neither do I find that the great advance of 
science hath done much in the rendering peda- 
gogy more facile and pleasant, either unto the 



TO THE EEADEE. 5 

teacher or the learner : for I perceive youth, to 
be instructed much in the same guise as was 
the practice of two centuries back; by the in- 
fluence of fearrather than love. Neither, though 
somewhat hath been done towards the affording 
to the poor a slight taste of letters, hath such 
advance been made towards elevating them to 
that state of mental enlightenment which is the 
birthright of every human being, as becometh 
a great and wealthy state, such as England doth 
now boast itself to be. Neither do I see that 
the state of woman-kind is such as becometh a 
period wherein the empire of mind over matter 
is so loudly proclaimed. For those disabilities 
and obstructions of law which were laid upon 
women in semi-barbarous times, by reason of 
their lack of physical strength for martial exer- 
cises, remain unaltered; and their education is 
for the most part conducted in such sort, as 
to debar them from that instruction in liberal 
science which shall best fit them for the per- 
formance of their many and great duties : nay, 
it is not rare to hear such as have freed them- 
selves from the shackles of idle prejudice so far 
as to acquire a competent knowledge of science, 
ancient and modern, rather flouted at, as if they 
had done some evil thing, than marked as an 



TO THE KEADEK. 

ensample for others. And in these things I 
judge that this age hath not made the advance 
which it claimeth to have done, in the policies 
of civil life, and consequently that it walketh 
lamely as it were, seeing that on the one leg 
it standeth high, while the other is curtailed 
. of its just proportions. 

Nevertheless it promiseth well for this age, 
that of all the common errors which in former 
editions of this work the author took occasion 
to remark on, scarcely any one remaineth unto 
this present day: and I may surely indulge a 
hope that if their forefathers suffered them- 
selves to be argued out of their prejudices, and 
flouted into the receiving of the truth, in so 
many instances ; the existing generation will 
not be less candid, and take in good part what 
haply may be more rudely said than is the wont 
of this age and country. Verily, if Truth have 
lain in the well ever since the time of Demo- 
critus — and, indeed, before his time, for he said 
she was then so deep that it was past his power 
to hale her up therefrom, — the wonder is not 
great if the language she speak be somewhat 
antiquated. Yet is her voice when she speaketh, 
so musical to human ears, that the words she 
useth matter not much: — to my readers, there- 



TO THE EEADEE. 7 

fore, I leave it to consider if in these things 
which I have noted, it be the voice of Tetjth 
which speakelh or not : and if indeed they 
should find it to be so, then haply they may 
profit thereby, to the putting away of prejudice 
so far, that, as this my record of common errors 
is of so much less bulk than the last, so in the 
next age there shall be none occasion to make 
any farther edition thereof. 



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OF THE CAUSES OF COMMON 
EEEOES. 

TO him who proposeth unto himself the 
correction of some of the errors which he 
continually findeth current in the world, an in- 
quiry into their causes is a natural beginning: 
and doubtless, as is set forth in the first editions 
of this work, the natural infirmity and decepti- 
bility of human nature have their share therein : 
but less so in the present perihelion of science, 
than formerly. For I do now perceive, when 
I look deeply into the causes aforesaid, that 
much of the error now current is founded on 
sayings delivered commonly in society, which 
yet any one of that society could well correct 
by his own proper knowledge, were he so 
minded. I hold its prevalence, therefore, to 
be rather the consequence of an indolence that 
will not, than of an ignorance or dullness that 
cannot examine the grounds thereof. 

"When the patterns of weights and measures 
were laid up in the sanctuary of the Hebrews, 



10 OF THE CAUSES OE 

for the prevention of mistake or fraud, we find 
very soon that the cubit and the ephah grew 
to be so much shorter and less in the hands of 
the people, that the difference came at last to 
be acknowledged and registered: — so unwilling 
are men to keep up to the full measure or- 
dained by God : and thus it is that we too, 
having our measure of life laid up unchangeably 
in the gospel, have come to have a worldly 
measure also, which falleth far short of it : and 
this is allowed and acknowledged — but hath 
Grod allowed it ? — and when we go from this 
world with some of these current errors in our 
mouths, arid measure ourselves thereby, are we 
certain that the measure of the sanctuary will 
not be brought forth to falsify our bad calcu- 
lation ? nay, are we not sure that it will ? 

Methinks, therefore, as errors of science are 
every day fading away before the greater light 
which seemeth to be leading us on, like the 
lengthening days of May, to the summer-tide 
of knowledge, where there shall be no real 
darkness ; — it is of more import to expose the 
falsity of some of these current sayings, and to 
bring forth into common use the cubit and 
ephah of the sanctuary, seeing that sooner or 
later we must measure our course of life there- 



COMMON EKKOKS. 11 

by; — than to combat many of those mere popu- 
lar errors in science which are only dragging on a 
lingering existence, and which will expire alto- 
gether in a very few years without any aid of 
mine. And if by such an examination of com- 
mon sayings that have thus far passed un- 
questioned, I may lead men generally to look a 
little more narrowly into their opinions on 
such matters ; and cultivate in them more ra- 
tional and logical modes of thinking, so that 
fallacies shall not, as heretofore, pass undetected 
through an indolent fear of the trouble of in- 
quiry, — I shall hold myself to have done good 
service to the world, and not be without hope 
that I may thereby have rendered my own 
last account somewhat more satisfactory. 

As for other errors of less concernment, 
some have arisen from witty sayings, which 
have come to be repeated for the neatness of 
the expression, till they acquired the weight 
of a maxim : and some have had their birth in 
too much learning; inasmuch as not a few 
writers have treated their own language con- 
temptuously, as deficient in grammatical forms; 
and so in studying to write Latin they have 
forgotten how to write English ; and thus have 
fallen themselves, and led others into notable 



12 OF THE CAUSES OE COMMON EEEOES. 

errors of phrase ; some of which out of love to 
my native tongue, which I hold to be rich in 
power of expression, when spoken in its purity, 
I shall take occasion to notice ; and doubtless, 
if we look narrowly into men's notions, Igno- 
rance also will be found to have a large family 
of errors that call him father : but as I have 
before said, they are a sickly brood, not likely 
in most instances to reach maturity ; for the 
which cause I am the less careful about them. 



OF VULGAK EEEOES IN THE WAY 
OF COMMON SAYINGS. 

U A young man must sow his wild oats." 

A BAD and profitless crop at any time, but 
worst when sown in a virgin soil; for 
then do they grow more rampant, so as ut- 
terly to choke all the seed planted by the care 
of the Divine Husbandman. But to speak of 
this notion without a figure, — for methinks it 
is on account of its foulness that it hath been 
so veiled; — and sometimes it is better .to show 
bad tilings in all then' ugliness, that men may 
eschew them, — what doth this phrase of " sow- 
ing wild oats' ' signify ? Doth it not amount 
to this, — that man, having lost his primaeval 
innocence, shall take good care that he never 
regain it ? That he doth well, if, after having 
given all the cream and richness of his life to 
Belial, he shall haply carry the sour skim milk 
thereof to Grod ? 

I remember once hearing one who had thus 



14 OF VULGAE EEEOES IN THE 

done, and was now grown old, lament himself, 
in that death was drawing nigh ; he being then 
suffering with gout, and other infirmities of age, 
come npon him all the sooner for the intempe- 
rance of his youth: to the which it was an- 
swered, that death was a happy deliverance 
from the pains of protracted age, and that even 
had his life formerly been such as he would 
now wish had been otherwise, yet that for 
many years he had had no cause for uneasiness 
on this head; seeing that he had doubtless re- 
pented of the past. Methinks I see his coun- 
tenance now T , and hear the tone of his voice 
when he replied to those well intended conso- 
lations — " Yes, I forsook my sins when my sins 
forsook me," — and he paused as if fearing to 
strengthen by utterance the thought which 
oppressed him ; but after a moment he added, 
" how can I tell that such repentance is of any 
avail ?" and then, though his age .and health 
required rest, he plunged again into the dissipa- 
tion of company, in order to get rid of uneasy 
remembrance, and it may be, of still more un- 
easy anticipations ; and so he died — he had 
" sown his wild oats," and gathered the fruit. 

But say some, and they are women whom I 
hear say so, — the more the shame and the pity 



WAY OF COMMON SAYINGS. 15 

when they who should be the salt of the earth, 
have so far lost their savour as to allow it to 
putrefy, — "Men must know the world, and they 
will avoid vice the better for having tasted, and 
found what it is like." " Grood madam,' ' I would 
answer to such an one, " there have been per- 
sons who have swallowed arsenic, and recovered; 
but did any one ever think that it was needful 
in order to the avoiding of that poison in future, 
to try how much danger and suffering attended 
the taking it ? Or did he ever find his consti- 
tution amended thereby ?' ' Man' s bodily frame 
is too complex in its mechanism to be disordered 
with impunity; and it may well be a question 
with an anatomist, who knoweth the functions 
of the brain, and the extreme delicacy of that 
organ, whether it ever entirely recovereth from 
the effects of this devilish apprenticeship. Nei- 
ther doth the youth thereby gain knowledge of 
the world ; for, thanks be to heaven ! bad as 
it is, it is not all bad ; and I think the larger 
portion of mankind will be found to have enough 
of good in their composition to pose a man 
shrewdly, who hath known only evil. A person 
may be innocent without being ignorant: he 
may know, alack ! — who can move in the world 
and not know it ? — that there is much of vice, 



16 OF VT7EGAB EEEOES IN THE 

andjnany evil men and evil things around hini : 
but he may at the same time dislike and avoid 
such society. It hath been said by Oste whom 
none will gainsay, that " no man can serve two 
masters; for either he will hate the one and 
love the other, or else he will hold to the one 
and despise the other." Men do not become 
vicious till they have learned to like vice ; for if 
they did not, it is too ugly in its features and 
frightful in its consequences to be entertained 
for a moment. What security is there then, 
that after having cherished this depraved appe- 
tite for a season, the order of nature will be re- 
versed in this one instance, and that habit will 
not in this, as in other the like cases, strengthen 
the propension to what hath been oft times 
done, till it becometh more and more difficult 
to avoid the doing it again ? 

I should like to ask such as hold this pseudo- 
knowledge of the world so especially needful to 
man's well-being, what place in that future 
world which all profess to believe in, this science 
is likely to fit them for ? Sure I am that if our 
conversation be destined to be with just men 
made perfect, as in Sacred Writ we are told it 
shall be, we shall find this kind of knowledge 
strangely out of place in such intercourse; and 



WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 17 

I question much if such a training would not go 
far to exclude a man from all good society there ; 
as being too vulgar and ill mannered a soul to 
be admitted among such as had been accus- 
tomed to keep good company. It is a conve- 
nient doctrine that men hold, that the happiness 
or infelicity of the next world is an arbitrary 
reward or punishment, which can be bestowed 
at the will of the Judge ; whose compassion 
being finally moved by a few tears and profes- 
sions of sorrow, he will thereupon remit the 
one, and bestow the other. But what if we 
should find that when the earthly mould is 
broken, the soul remaineth with all the ugly 
features there given it, settled and fixed forever? 
Will not this so-called knowledge of the world 
then remain upon its front, as an unseemly wart 
or wen, quite foreign from its true beauty ? 

Methinks the most careless libertine would 
shrink from the thought of remembering to all 
eternity, — even if he had no other penalty to 
fear, — all the scenes of gross vice he had wit- 
nessed, all the innocence he had undermined ; 
all the misery he had been the cause of: yet if 
we believe in a future judgment, we cannot sup- 
pose that the remembrance of our past deeds 
will ever be wiped out, for we are to receive 
c 



18 OF VULGAR ERBORS IN THE 

"the reward of the deeds done in the lody, 
whether they be good or whether they be evil.' ' 
But excesses of this kind are a mark of spirit, 
it is said; and some young damsel will be found 
to remark that she doth "not like an effeminate 
man." Fair lady, did you ever hear of one 
Jesus of Nazareth? Did any of the most famed 
heroes of ancient or modern times ever meet 
torture and death more calmly than he did ? or 
ever bear himself before prejudiced and unjust 
judges with more noble self-possession and dig- 
nity ? Did He want spirit ? He, from whom 
the scourge of the Eoman drew not a sigh ; He 
who conversed calmly on the cross ! was He 
effeminate ? His company was sought by the 
wealthy and great, the poor carpenter's son ! 
could He be wanting in elegance of manners ? 
Yet how patient, how gentle, how kind was he 
in all the relations of life ! how pure, how holy 
was his conduct ! He, the young, the courted 
guest ; the idol of the people, who might have 
set the crown upon his brow at any moment of 
his career, if he would but have given the word! 
If you have ever heard of this person, look once 
more at your man of spirit; place the two 
characters side by side — but I will not insult 
your judgment by drawing the parallel ; suffice 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 19 

it that Jesus of Nazareth though " tempted 
in all things like as we are ;" young, followed, 
fond of female society, and joining in all the 
pleasures of social life, — sowed no wild oats. 

" A good fellow, nobody's enemy but his own." 

It hath offc times been matter of wonderment 
to me how many phrases do come to be received 
as current coin in the world, which for certain 
were never lawfully stamped in the mint of 
either religion or reason: and among these 
brass shillings of society, I know none that 
better deserveth to be nailed to the counter 
than the one above placed ; for many an idle 
young man hath, before now, found it the last 
in his pocket, and haply hath exchanged it for 
a pistol bullet, thinking himself a gainer by 
the bargain. 

If man grew to a rock like a limpet, then 
might he haply be his own enemy without any 
great harm to his neighbours ; but he who 
liveth in society, and faileth to perform his part 
aright in the station assigned to him, doth all 
that in him lieth to destroy the body politic. 
He who is delivered over to vice and drunken- 
ness — for such, being interpreted, is the meaning 
of a good fellow who is only his own enemy, — 



20 Or VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 

setteth a bad example to his dependents; squan- 
dered his fortune on unworthy objects, to the 
neglect of all that he might and ought to have 
done towards the relief and advance of the 
deserving ; plungeth his family into difficulties ; 
grieveth, shameth, and perhaps starveth them ; 
ruineth his health, so as to make himself a bur- 
then to those about him; and fmally,after having 
been a bad citizen, a bad master, a bad husband, 
a bad father, sinketh into the grave with a soul 
so irrecoverably poisoned by habits of sensuality 
and gross earthliness, that it would seem rather 
fit to rot with its putrefying companion, than to 
enter into any region of spiritualized existence. 
And this man who hath fulfilled no one duty, 
but on the contrary hath spread around him a 
dank atmosphere of sin, is called " a good fel- 
low," merely because he hath done all this 
with an air of reckless gaiety, which showed 
an utter absence of any feeling for the beings 
he was rendering miserable! Verily the world's 
measure is wofully short of the standard cubit 
and ephah of the sanctuary. 

" We must do as others do." 
So doubtless said the people before the flood, 
and the natives of Sodoma: and from their time 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 21 

downwards, half the evils of the world may be 
tracked to that gregarious propension in man, 
which maketh him, like a silly sheep, leap 
because others leap, notwithstanding that he 
himself seeth no just cause for any such feat 
of agility. But "what will people say?" ex- 
claim the weakly minded. "Grood Sir, or Ma- 
dam," I would answer, " people" think far less 
of your concerns than you imagine ; or even if 
they do bestow a passing notice on them, there 
is so little of unanimity among men, unless 
where the great instincts of our nature are con- 
cerned, that oft, yea, most times, what one party 
blameth, another will praise. True it is, that 
it concerneth all who would do good in their 
generation, so far to make this inquiry as that 
they may not needlessly give offence, even to 
the conceits and prejudices of their neighbours ; 
because so to do doth not only militate against 
the rule of Christian charity, but, inasmuch as 
it may cause their " good to be evil spoken of," 
doth notably diminish their usefulness ; but to 
let this consideration of what others will say 
concerning us, be, as it often is, a worm at the 
root of good intention, a barrier across the path 
which leadeth to our goal, — what is it but to 
give idle talk more importance than conscience, 



22 OF YTLGAR EEEOES TS THE 

and to set the fear of man to weigh against 
the fear of God, in the balances of this world. 
In the greatest matter that ever was enacted 
on this earth, down to the most insignificant oc- 
currence of ordinary life, this unhappy question 
hath forced its way, to the manifest moral per- 
turbation, if not to the actual overthrowing of 
the inquirer. It was an idle and common oc- 
currence that the daughter of Herodias should 
dance ; and it was a no less common occurrence 
that a king, being drunk, should make a promise 
whereof he foresaw not the consequences ; but 
it was the fear of what the lords who sate at 
meat with him would say, that made Herod 
embrue his hands in the blood of an innocent 
man, even when his better nature started back 
from the commission of so heinous a crime. 
And thus much for a trivial occurrencewherethe 
dread of the idle judgment of man, led to bit- 
ter consequences and deep guilt; but there was 
another and a greater occasion where this con- 
cernment for the ill digested opinion and talk of 
others, played a yet more notable and important 
part; for what was it that led Pontius Pilate 
to condemn Him whom he in his heart believed 
to be guiltless, but the fear that "people would 
say" he was disloyal unto Caesar? And to pass 



WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 23 

from the greater unto the less, how long ago 
would that evil custom bequeathed to us by 
our barbarous ancestors, have been rusting, 
with their armour, in forgetfulness, did not the 
cowardly fear of what strangers would say, 
outbalance the laws of Grod, and the best 
affections of our nature ; and arm the hand of 
the friend against the friend, when both, at 
heart, shrunk from the appeal to this ultima 
ratio of unreasoning men. 

But leaving this part of the matter, wherein 
this evil carefulness for the sweetness of the 
world's breath leadeth to crimes of a deep dye; 
let us farther consider the ill influence which 
this maxim that 'we must do as others do,' ex- 
erciseth on the common affairs of life. A man, 
for instance, when he summeth up his reckon- 
ings, and asketh himself how his business is 
thriving, may perceive that he is not so well to 
do in the world as he was ; that the sources of 
his gains, without any fault of his, perhaps, are 
lessening ; and that there is no reasonable hope 
that they will again prosper him as they have 
heretofore done. What doth he then ? — doth 
he content himself to spendlesswhenhe gaineth 
less ? — to proportion the sum of his outgoings 
to that of his diminished incomings ? No, ' what 



24 OF VULGAR EKROES IN THE 

would people say ? he must do as others of a 
like rank do.' — What wonder if ruin follow?. . . 
Again ; — a man of small fortune hath acquaint- 
ances whose larger means may justify their in- 
dulging in many of the gauds and ornaments of 
life ; — the wife of such an one hath jewels; — 
another keepethatable,not for hospitality alone, 
but show : — our poorer man hath hitherto been 
thrifty and careful, but an idle question maketh 
its way into his mind of 'what will people think' 
of his frugal though hospitable board, his wife's 
lack of bravery in her attire, — his own plain 
mode of life ? — Where this notion hath once 
settled on the mind, it is like rust, corroding 
and cankering whatever it touches ; it eateth 
away his peace, and paltry as it is, hath power 
to destroy the comfort of a life ! To be rid of 
it he spendeth what he getteth not, vieth with 
his neighbour for a year or two, and becometh 
a beggar for the remainder of his days. 

Nor is this over carefulness for the world's 
opinion less an enemy to kindness than to thrift: 
many a deed whose object is to raise the fallen, 
to cheer those on whom the hard hearted have 
frowned, to speak peace to a troubled soul, or 
other such christian act, hath been nipped in 
the bud by its selfish, blighting breath; and. 



WAT OP COMMON SAYINGS. 25 

like other tyrannical rulers, it is not satisfied 
with the homage of our actions only ; it must 
have that of our speech ; and leadeth to injustice 
in more, and more diverse ways, than I can here 
specify. The experience of every one will, I 
doubt not, furnish him with many instances 
hereof in lesser matters ; as where persons 
really not ill natured have joined with the com- 
pany in slanderous or unedifying talk, lest it 
should be thought strange, should they not do 
as others did ; and so on in other things of a 
like kind. It would be better both for ourselves 
and others, methinks, if instead of asking "what 
vrdl people say ?" we were to ask " what will 
conscience say ?" and instead of measuring our 
doings by those of others, were to seek to square 
them by the standard of the sanctuary. We 
might haply save ourselves from many crimes, 
and some follies, by so doing. 

"He that spareth the rod spoileth the child" 

Is a sentence which, though it be that of the wise 
Solomon, is often in the mouth of many a man 
that hath not Solomon's wisdom, or he would 
have known that if the advance of knowledge 
be not of force to enable us to teach the young 
to love goodness, rather than to fear punishment, 



26 Or YTTLGAR ERRORS IK THE 

we might, for all the profit we have gained from 
learning, as well have remained ignorant. Truly, 
that is but a slavish service which is paid merely 
through fear of the rod ; and as good Doctor 
Martin Luther hath well said, " How shall our 
works please God when they come from a dis- 
inclined and unwilling heart ? For to fulfil 
the law is to do the works of the law with incli- 
nation and affection ; and freely, without the 
constraint of the law, to lead a godly and pious 
life, as if there were no fear of punishment." — 
I trow that none of those who are so free to 
quote this sentence of king Solomon, would be 
satisfied with all Solomon's knowledge, even 
though he spake of all plants, from the cedar of 
Lebanon, to the hyssop that hangeth on the 
wall : I hold it therefore among vulgar errors to 
suppose that we are to make no advance in the 
matter of education, when there is no other 
point wherein we would be satisfied to live and 
do as king Solomon did. And hereout arises 
much bitter fruit ; for while parents are pleasing 
themselves with the thought that all offence is 
to be whipped out of the child by future peda- 
gogues, and all learning whipped in ; those years 
wherein the tender shoot can best be trained, 
are wholly neglected ; and the child who haply, 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 27 

in after years, may be called on to harangue in 
the pulpit or the senate ; — to guide a family, or 
it may be, the state ; — is left in the nursery to 
learn to speak English from rude unlettered 
persons, who cannot utter three words without 
transgressing against the commonest rules of 
grammar ; — and to gain the first notions of logical 
reasoning from those whose arguments reach no 
farther than, "it is because it is;" — and the first 
ideas of duty from such as most frequently hold 
the bearing a fair face towards the head of 
the family, to be the only point to be aimed at ; 
and whose squabbles and ill language, uncon- 
strained before the baby, give its young mind 
the first impressions. One who spake as never 
man spake, said, "Ye do not gather grapes from 
thorns, nor figs from thistles" — yet what but 
thorns and thistles are likely to spring up in a 
nursery where the mind is left, as was quaintly 
said by some one, " a sheet of white paper for 
the devil to write upon" — whereas if parents 
would do their duty, and by keeping their chil- 
dren with them under such gentle restraint as 
parental affection would dictate, check in the 
bud the first indications of evil, the young 
memory would be stored with knowledge picked 
up from conversation, without the weariness of 



28 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

learning ; the language would be polished, the 
manners refined ; and the child, instead of com- 
ing down once a day to destroy everything he 
can lay his hands on ; to howl if in an ill, or 
to bellow if in a good humour ; would be a 
cheerful andpleasant companion; knowing when 
and where to indulge in his recreations, and 
when to withdraw into discreet silence, should 
graver matters require it. Nor is this any fine 
drawn picture of the imagination; for in this my 
revisitation of the world, it hath been my hap- 
piness to see some such families, and the felicity 
enjoyed by all the members, old and young, hath 
shown that knowledge, if rightly employed, can 
give us a better system than that of a semi-bar- 
barous age, now passed away along with that 
law of Moses, which, though good for the times, 
was pronounced by the greatest of all authori- > 
ties to have been given to the Israelites " be- 
cause of the hardness of their hearts." 

" Children should not ask questions" 

I eemembee once hearing of the fellow of a 
college at Oxford, whose training had been in 
the days when university men could go deeper 
into a bottle of port-than a problem of Euclid, 
who exclaimed against the evil practice of 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 29 

allowing children to be inquisitive. "A child 
cometh up to one, now-a-days," cried this rem- 
nant of the olden times, " and asketh me the 
diameter of the moon : now I don't know what 
is the diameter of the moon, and I don't like to 
be asked such questions . ' ' This old gentleman 
was at least honest, and confessed without re- 
serve the real cause of his objection. If others 
would be as honest, I have little doubt that we 
should find the very strenuous objections made 
to children's inquisitiveness, and eagerness to 
search into omne scibile, to have its origin in a 
like cause ; their elders do not know the dia- 
meter of the moon. But meseemeth that even 
though the former generation should have been 
ignorant of many useful things, they have not 
any right thereby engendered, to choke the 
spring of knowledge for the young, even though 
their searching inquiries should disclose how 
little the old had drunk of it : and he must have 
been a bad parent who hath gained so little of 
the affection of his child by his kindliness, as to 
have any fear that he shall attract his mockery 
by his want of erudition. A better answer 
would such a parent give, even in that case, 
were he to say, " My child, when I was young, 
no one would answer my questions; and there- 



30 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

fore, to my regret, I remained ignorant of much 
that I wished to know : but, my dear child, 
I will not so deal with thee ; and, therefore, 
though to this question of thine I am unable to 
give an answer of mine own science, yet as hap- 
pily we have in this age books that will tellus this 
and much more, we will together seek this out, 
and then we shall both be the wiser." Nor need 
any one fear the being lightly esteemed by his 
children for this plain spoken sincerity : for the 
lesson thus learned is made pleasant by the very 
circumstance that it is participated in by the pa- 
rent, not dogmatically enforced ; and the child 
will rather wish that much of his learning 
should be thus acquired, than that he should 
run the hazard of being rebuked for slowness 
of apprehension, by one who already knoweth 
what he hath to explain. 

Moreover this inquiring spirit which men are 
at such pains to repress, would seem to have 
been bestowed by God for the express purpose 
of farthering man's knowledge : for the child 
asketh of his parent the cause of this and that, 
and if he be answered well and freely, he will 
have learned, long ere he come to man's estate, 
the current state of science ; and having thus 
a foundation whereon to advance his building, 



WAY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 31 

he may chance thereupon to place a super- 
structure which may be both useful and fair : 
but if this first instinct be checked, and the child 
be compelled to look on what he understandeth 
not, and yet hold no question thereupon ; he 
will soon learn to glance carelessly over the 
things around him, so that "seeing he shall not 
see, and hearing he shall not understand ;" and 
when he cometh to years, miscalled of discre- 
tion, it will be well for him if they afford enough 
of it to enable him then to hold his tongue. 

During the first years of childhood the brain 
is tender, and impatient of much hard applica- 
tion ; and, therefore, if heavy lessons be set him 
to learn, a child soon becometh unhealthy, and 
finally lumpish and incapable : but it is at this 
period of the tenderness of the brain, that he 
is most prone to ask questions as to all that he 
seeth or heareth, as though he were exercising 
that organ in the same way that he doth his 
limbs, by many irregular jumps and movements ' 
which f avom* its healthy development . If these 
movements be restrained, the body becometh 
deformed ; nor doth the brain suffer less by the 
repressing this its natural exercise ; becoming 
ever after inert, and unfit for all those higher 
operations of intellect, which require prompti- 



32 OP YTJLGAB EKROKS IN THE 

tude of thought : so that not only is much pre- 
cious time lost afterwards, in gaining that rudi- 
mentary knowledge which might have been ac- 
quired viva voce without fatigue, but the organ 
itself is, by its long inactivity, rendered less fit 
for its work. Two heavy evils whereof the 
world hath daily experience in the bad ordering 
of affairs, by reason of the lack of mental ex- 
pertness in those who have been entrusted with 
the overseeing thereof : and thus a large quota 
of mischief arises from the senseless vanity of 
parents, who are ashamed to acknowledge their 
lack of science ; or their inconsiderateness in 
giving forth commands which they cannot sup- 
port by any just and convincing reason, for 
which cause they dread the word, " why ?" — or 
their indolence in not choosing to seek, either 
in their own minds or elsewhere, the means of 
satisfying the first longings of the child after 
true knowledge and justice. 

" A hoy should he manly T 
And what doth this phrase of " being manly," 
intend to express ? We can understand what 
was meant by the aperr] of the Greeks, and the 
virtus of the Romans in heathen times ; for in 
states when war was the only honourable em- 



way or commobt sayings. 33 

ployment, — plunder the only riches, — and the 
choice was only between slavery, literal back- 
breaking slavery, and conquest ; it is easy to 
conceive that personal courage was reckoned 
the virtue kclt zt,oyj)v. But the manliness of a 
Christian Englishman is a much more puzzling 
thing. " I like my boys to be manly," saith a 
father ; and thereupon he setteth his children 
to fight one another or their companions ; not 
in defence of the oppressed ; not in resistance 
to wrong doing which they can no otherwise 
avoid ; but upon some quarrel, having for its 
origin either ill humour, or pride, or ill passion 
of some kind. It is manly then, in the eyes of 
this father that his son should do, what as a 
Christian, he is forbidden to do ! Yet this same 
parent would shudder at the thought of allowing 
him to bow to the image of a Hindoo deity, or 
of a Eomish saint even. But wherein lies the 
difference ? Are we empowered to be thus cu- 
riously nice in the picking out which of God's 
positive laws we will obey, as though we gained 
an immunity for the neglect of the rest, by the 
observance of one or two ? If we are to call it 
manly to cast off the very sign and badge of our 
Christian profession, " hereby shall men know 
that ye are my disciples, that ye love one an- 

D 



34 OF VULGAR EBEOES EN" THE 

other," — we need make small scruple to imitate 
the example of the Dutch traders to Japan in 
former times, and deny our faith when interest 
prompteth us so to do. To my mind, the sin is 
not greater in the one case, than the other : for 
to be manly according to this devilish interpreta- 
tion of the word, is — not to be a Christian man. 
If such is to be his future training, wherefore is 
a child mocked by being signed " with the sign 
of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall 
not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ 
crucified" . . . and shall " continue his faithful 
soldier and servant unto his life's end ?" Verily 
the father who meaneth to have such a manly 
son, might spare himself the trouble of carry- 
ing him to the font. 

"A man is not responsible for his belief" 
Meseemeth that there is, in the use made of 
this saying, some deal of error, sheltering itself 
under an undeniable truth; for though man's 
mind be so framed that he cannot believe with- 
out proof, and therefore he remaineth free from 
blame, if, from poverty, he be misinstructed, 
and thereby his faith be starved; or if, from ill 
instruction he be supplied with prejudice only, 
and thereby his faith be poisoned ; or if, from 



WAY OF COMMON SAYINGS. 35 

being born in a pagan country, the light hath 
not arrived at him, and therefore the seed of 
faith hath not been able to germinate ; yet if the 
lack of belief in revelation be the consequence 
of inattention, which doth not seek for proof, or 
of indolence, which will not be at the pains to 
cultivate the intellect enough to be able to com- 
prehend the proof when given, — then is such a 
man assuredly responsible for his errors. Yea, 
methinks he incurreth the blame of the servant 
in the parable who having a talent given him, 
improved it not, but brought it back, not even 
naked as he received it, but wrapped in a nap- 
kin of fleshly desires and conceits, which he had 
bestowed on it whilst it was in his keeping, and- 
complained of his Lord as a hard master, be- 
cause having bestowed on his idle servant the 
means of bettering his estate, he expected him 
to have made some use thereof. 

It is a strange notion of many well inten- 
tioned persons, that religious knowledge doth 
differ from all other ; and that it cometh by 
prayer only, and not by study. How shall the 
man pray who knoweth not, or believeth not the 
necessity for prayer ? But when study hath 
roused his attention, then there will be some 
likelihood that, like the treasurer of Queen 



36 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

Candace, lie will find out his own ignorance, 
and seek for some man to teach him ; yea, look 
on high for the instruction of that Divine 
Teacher, who is ever ready to make them 
wise, who seek for true wisdom. 

It hath never been my luck to know one 
whose faith bore right good fruit, who had not 
reasoned thereupon; for as St. Clement of 
Alexandria doth truly say, "faith is knowledge, 
and knowledge is faith ; Grod having so consti- 
tuted them that they mutually lean on each 
other, by turns leading and being led." Nor 
for this kind of reasoning, is it needful to have 
been trained in the schools of learning ; for as 
the ancient fathers of the church do well observe, 
man's mind is naturally \oyacog, i.e. rational 
or logical ; and therefore many a peasant who 
never heard of Aristoteles, doth, notwithstand- 
ing, come to a good logical conclusion by dint of 
his own deep thinking, aided by experience in 
life, and right intentions. Let a man therefore 
well judge himself, ere he assert, as a reason 
for his incredulity, that we are not responsible 
for our belief: for if he have not exerted all 
the powers of his mind upon the question, aided 
by all the cultivation which his station of life 
hath put within his reach, he may find when 



WAT OF COMMON SAYING-S. 37 

it is too late for his comfort, that he hath cast 
away that faith which is knowledge, and know- 
ledge which is faith, to his own great detriment 
in all the circumstances of life. For man, as he is 
not self-existent, so neither is he self-supported. 
He who would find diamonds must well know 
andbelievethat there is a gem within that rough 
outside, or he will pass it by unheeded: and he 
who would truly prosper in this present world, 
must sufficiently believethatthereisgoodmeant 
to him in the seeming roughnesses of life, to in- 
duce him to seek for it with some pains, other- 
wise he will sit down desponding, and only see 
black stones where others are gathering gems. 
Man is not yet what he shall be, and in this his 
infancy, if he be not content to lean on the hand 
which God holdeth out to him, he will stumble 
amid the rough ground which he hath to pass 
over ere he reach his resting place. 

"Women have no concern with politics" 
Is a saying which goeth current with the many, 
who indeed are not always the wise, as an incon- 
trovertible truth; yet there is no opinion which 
I have heard in these days, that, to my mind, 
more savoureth of error. Politics, as I think, 
is a word applied to the science of government ; 



38 Or VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

but in its larger signification it extendeth itself 
to the knowledge of the relations between differ- 
ent states, and the influence which the circum- 
stances of one may have upon the well-being of 
another, as well as to the acquaintance with the 
civil polity of our own. Now as the prosperity 
of a nation consisteth in the due attention on 
the part of its governors to all these matters ; 
and as the well-being of every citizen is deeply 
involved in the prosperity of the land wherein 
he abideth ; so hath it always been held that in 
all free states the rulers should be under a cer- 
tain control of public opinion; this opinionbeing 
indeed no other than the collective expression 
of the notions held by the majority of individual 
citizens. Now as the essence of good govern- 
ment is that it shall protect the weak against 
the strong, so methinks, women, instead of 
having no concern with politics, have necessarily 
a peculiar interest therein ; seeing that their 
small physical strength must always render them 
the most liable to oppression, either amid civil 
broils, or foreign invasion : for the which cause 
Plato, in his book of laws, would have the 
women of his imaginary state so trained to 
active, and even martial exercises, that should 
the defenders of a city be slain or absent, the 



WAY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 39 

women thereof should be able in some sort to 
protect themselves against the violence of their 
enemies. 

But I am inclined to think that the untrue 
conclusion expressed in the above stated saying 
is drawn from premises no less false; for I hear 
it by many asserted that the female is born with 
a weaker intellect than the male. Now, theo- 
retically, this should be false : for all through 
animal nature, that faculty whatever it be, which 
is peculiar to the species, is possessed in an 
equal degree by both the sexes. Thus, the scent 
of the hound, or the wiliness of the fox, or the 
imitativeness of the monkey, differeth not one 
whit, whether the animal be male or female ; and 
as reason, and a sharp discernment of the rela- 
tions of things, is the peculiar faculty of man, 
so we might, by analogy, conclude that the 
female of the species possessed it in an equal 
degree : but we rind a yet stronger argument in 
the anatomy of the brain, which is the organ 
whereby rational conclusions are shaped and 
elaborated : for here is no defect, but the con- 
trary ; for in regard to the proportion that the 
brain beareth to the body, the female is no ways 
behind the male, but rather exceedeth in the 
quantity thereof; neither is there any organ or 



40 OF VTJLGAE EEEOES IN" THE 

part wanting therein, of those which the male 
brain doth possess. With regard to the usemade 
thereof, I have already remarked that the educa- 
tion afforded to the female sex is not generally 
of such a nature as, considering the advance of 
science, was to he expected; and yet despite of 
these disadvantages, there have been examples 
enough in almost every science, and especially 
in that most uninviting and severe one of 
the mathematics, to show that there is no 
lack of power, were it duly cultivated. There- 
fore I hold that this opinion of the intellectual 
incapacity of the female sex, must be ranked 
with those presumed truths which it is to be 
hoped that the enlightenment of the age will 
soon place among declared errors; and that 
citizens of the state who have property and lives 
to lose, will no longer be told that they have 
no concern in the policy which may bring both 
into jeopardy. I have heard much of "feminine 
accomplishments," and "feminine virtues," as 
if the two sexes were of entirely different species, 
and had no concerns in common ; but I must 
freely confess, however strange it may seem to 
those who are freer in the use of this phrase 
than they are haply clear in the understand- 
ing of it, that I never yet could discover 



way or COMMON SAYINGS. 41 

which they be. For should we term painting 
or music such accomplishments, there are 
abundance of the male sex as well as the 
female, who excel in them, and therefore they 
do not of nature belong to either ; and for the 
so-called "feminine virtues," if any will tell 
me of a virtue which becometh a woman, that 
doth not also become a man, I shall be wiser 
thereafter than the gospel hath made me. 

" Marriage is a lottery" 

To them that choose to make it so ; for if a 
farmer going to a market where samples of corn 
or beeves are exposed for sale, shall determi- 
nately shut his eyes, and purchase the one upon 
which some chance shall cause him to lay his 
hand, I know no law to prevent it; save that, 
if it were often done, his next of kin might per- 
chance sue for a writ de lunatieo inqidrendo: 
but since marriage is, for the most part done 
once for all, the individual can, if he will, make 
this kind of lottery of it : for however great the 
folly, it would want that succession of proof 
which would enable the chancellor to allow re- 
lations to interfere in the way of restraint. How 
the saying arose, I am at a loss to tell, unless it 
were in those times when parents selected hus- 



42 OP YTTLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

bands for their daughters, and wives for their 
sons, in their nonage: it might then be held a 
lottery what the infant thus betrothed might 
prove to be when grown to maturity: and per- 
chance, as sayings last long after the circum- 
stances which gave rise to them, this, which was 
a true condemnation of a bad practice in its first 
use hath now grown into a proverbial justifica- 
tion of a practice equally bad: for to take him. 
or her who is to be the companion of our future 
life, by mere chance, and without enquiry, 
bringeth us back to those times whereof this 
saying was the reproach. Yet we do not see 
that a servant who may at any time be dis- 
charged at a month's notice, and trouble us no 
farther, is received into our houses without a 
strict enquiry into former conduct, ability, and 
disposition: a strange instance of prudence in 
the lesser matter, coupled with carelessness in 
the greater. And though something might be 
said in excuse on the part of the man, inasmuch 
as the law of this realm of England, as I have 
before noted, giveth him a kind of mastership 
over his wife which savoureth of that law of the 
strongest which barbarous times do affect, and 
thus he may think her temper and conduct of 
the less import, — what is the woman thinking 



WAT OF COMilOX SAYINGS. 43 

of when she taketh to herself a master whose 
character she hath not sought to ascertain! Is 
she ignorant that, by the sanction of this same 
law of -England, he can imprison her in any 
room in his house, so long as he himself is an 
inhabitant thereof ; — that he may strike her, so 
long as he innicteth no severe bodily injury; 
that he may leave her and live in adultery with 
another ; but if, when thus abandoned, she can 
earn money to support herself, or come into an 
inheritance from her family, he can claim and 
take it from her, for the use of himself and his 
paramour ? Knoweth she not this ? and if she 
do, what term shall we find for the folly of her 
who maketh it a lottery whether all this may 
not be her lot ? — 1 speak not here of the law 
which surely hath strange and ugly features for 
an age that boasteth itself as a polished one ; 
but I do say that whilst the law is such as to 
make marriage a legal slavery for the woman, 
lightened only of its burthensomeness by the 
temper and just feelings of a good man, who 
would abhor to use the wicked privileges thus 
allowed him ; it behoveth her, ere she so bind 
herself, to know thoroughly the habits and prin- 
ciples of him whom she trusteth with such large 
authority over her. A christian in principle 



44 OE TTJLGAE EEKORS IN THE 

would not avail himself of such a law; as indeed 
he blusheth now to see it recorded among those 
of his country: but the world's code of honour 
affordeth no security against it, as daily experi- 
ence too sadly sheweth. Let every woman then 
beware, and take heed that her future peace 
be not thrown away in this " lottery:" and let 
every man beware also, lest with all these pri- 
vileges of law, he should find that a bad woman 
can make them all of none avail, and bring him 
to confess that he had better have looked ere 
he made that headlong leap, led thereto by a 
fair face hiding an evil heart. 

" You cannot put an old liead on young 



Ie in the saying which standeth above, it be 
only intended to be affirmed that we cannot 
expect to gather the blossom and pluck the fruit 
of the same tree at the same season, or in other 
phrase, to find in a youth who hath not yet 
numbered twenty years, the experience of one 
of twice or thrice that age; it may be reckoned 
among those self evident propositions which 
persons might well spare themselves the trouble 
of putting forth or iterating, and can as little 
be gainsaid, as that grey hairs are more to be 



wax or coimoN sayings. 45 

looked for on the head of an old man than on 
that of a youth. But if more than this be sup- 
posed to be contained by implication in the saw 
I have mentioned, methinks it is not only 
dubious, but capable of large error. The wise 
Lord Bacon hath said that" a man that is young 
in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no 
time; but," he addeth, — alack that the world 
should have profited so little by his wisdom ! — 
" that happeneth rarely." Now that it is good 
that the young should be merry and happy, it 
must be a sorry cynic that would deny; but 
that mirth and joy may be all the better for 
having wisdom, goodness, and learning in their 
company must be admitted by all: and if the 
training of the young be such as shall lead 
them to seek and delight in such things, they 
will indeed be less giddy and perturbed on all 
occasions, but not a whit the less happy. 

Should it be a question how this saying hath 
become current in the world, it may be consi- 
dered that it is a very facile and convenient 
mode of shifting the burthen from our own 
shoulders to those of dame Nature: yet is she 
not blameworthy in this matter, for she hath 
given abundance of brains to the young, and 
if they be not taught to use them, it is not 
her fault but the parent's. 



46 OF VTTLGAB EEEOES IN THE 

We have examples enough, of the early putting 
forth of such buds of wisdom as have matured 
into goodly fruit, to prove that such things may 
be: but if ye shall be at the pains of inquiring 
whether the present fashion of indoctrinating 
youth, as well boys as maidens, be of a kind to 
supply by thought and cogitation what is lack- 
ing in experience, ye shall surely find that there 
is some main error at the bottom of the present 
plan of education; since the best fruits of it are 
wanting. Yet is there not any lack of power 
in the brain, for ye shall oft times see a lad of 
sixteen or seventeen years of age, possessed of 
many acquirements not to be gamed without 
hard study. Such an one will be well grounded 
in Greek, Latin, and the mathematics, and these 
are not to be learned without some thought ; 
but this glorious faculty whereby man doth so 
rise above the brutes, is for the most part left 
uncultivated, or only called into action by the 
dread of the psedagogue: — the memory indeed 
is disciplined, but the reason left untrained. 
For proof hereof ye have but to look at the 
course of a young man's life: at school first, ' 
then at the university, and lastly under the 
especial training for his profession or trade be it 
what it may, wherein the fashion of empirical 



WAT OE COMMON SAYINGS. 47 

teaching doth so generally prevail, that ye shall 
rarely find a tutor or instructor of youth any 
where, who is either able or willing to answer 
those questions on the foundations of science, of 
law, or of commerce, which suggest themselves 
to an ingenuous mind; 'and thus all teaching 
resolveth itself into a set of dogmatic rules for 
particular cases, rather than broad principles, 
whereon the tyro may ground general conclu- 
sions, such as may guide him on other occa- 
sions than the one in question. 

And if this be true as regardeth youth of the 
male sex, how much more biting an evil is it 
as regardeth the female : for the teachers them- 
selves, being for the most part ill and insuffi- 
ciently instructed, dare not step beyond the 
mere setting of lessons to be learned by rote; 
from which so little of wisdom is to be gained, 
that ye shall frequently find the old shoulders 
surmounted by a very childish head, as far as 
regardeth the brain furniture, however it may 
externally bear the signs of age. 

Many are the complaints made in this age, 
of the neglect of education ; and truly I do hold 
them to be well founded: but I do also note 
that what is called education, though it may 
raise the recipients thereof above the depths of 



48 OF VT7LGAB EEKOES IN THE 

brutal ignorance, is far off from a training to 
wisdom. A young maiden is kept in the 
nursery and the school room, like a ship on the 
stocks, whilst she is furnished with abundance 
of showy accomplishments, and is launched like 
the ship, looking taut and trim, but empty 
of everything that can make her useful. What 
captain would undertake to go a voyage in such 
a vessel? He would naturally say, I must have 
store of all that is needful to meet the storms 
of winter, the attacks of enemies, the wear and 
tear of the voyage. And wherein is the maiden 
better qualified to meet the rubs and storms of 
life? What store of knowledge hath she to 
enable her to meet the wintry period of life 
cheerfully? What mental firmness to with- 
stand the enemies of her virtue? What good 
common sense to meet the wear and tear of 
every day life? — She is a doll to be played with, 
not a companion to cheer, or a wise friend to 
guide, or to help in the bufferings of ill fortune. 
Yet if we will mark those persons of both sexes, 
who.— by circumstances, which though deemed 
untoward, were God's schooling for the mind, — 
have had all the powers of thinking and acting 
early called forth; we shall see that they have 
proved themselves equal to the demands made 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 49 

upon them. Now if wise and gentle training 
were during early life made to perform the part 
of hard necessity, the same good effect might be 
secured without the pain and harass ; and chil- 
dren might be accustomed to employ their rea- 
son on the ordinary business of life, without 
foregoing any branch of useful learning, or 
losing any of those refreshments and delights 
which the great Creator hath provided for the 
young and innocent. For a better system of 
teaching, where the reason rather than the me- 
mory should be taxed, would make learning less 
the drudgery of one who fears punishment, than 
the pleasant occupation of the intellect; and 
thus would it both occupy less time, and be far 
more useful for the affairs of life; where we 
never find that set rules will serve us for every 
variety of circumstance, but where general prin- 
ciples are needed for guidance on fresh occasions 
and must thus be applied pro re nata, as we are 
wont to say in our prescriptions. Were such 
training given to the young, I think the saying 
I have commented on, would not be so gene- 
ral: for it would then be seen that a wise and 
experienced head can be placed on young 
shoulders ; and that nothing is needful thereto 
E 



50 OF VULGAR EEROES IN THE 

but the careful and early use of the faculties 
God hath given. 

u Ne sutor ultra crepidam"* 

Albeit this saying be ancient, it is not without 
its harm in modern times also; for it is a cruelty 
to attempt to bound the expansion of the human 
intellect because the law of nature may have re- 
quired the labour of the hand to minister to 
the maintenance of the body: and to scoff at the 
endeavour to rise above the mire of daily toil, 
and soar in the empyrean of spiritual enjoyments 
for a short space, showeth a small share of the 
brotherly feeling which should exist among the 
followers of Christ. Moreover the maxim, if 
attended to, would be hurtful to mankind gene- 
rally ; — for many of our most useful discoveries, 
and much that doth most delectate our imagina- 
tion, have been the work of persons who would 
never have benefited or delighted then' contem- 
poraries and posterity, had they thereby been 
deterred from engaging in pursuits very little 
germane to their worldly calling. The lawyer 
would never have written poetiy, nor the priest 
have invented machinery: yea, Friar Bacon 

* Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last. 



WAY OP COMMON SAYINGS. 51 

would have left us without gunpowder, which 
albeit it hath its evils, yet hath served man much 
more effectually than it hath injured: and even 
in times nearer to the period wherein that saying 
had its rise, Cicero himself would never have 
left us that rich legacy of pure morality and 
wise philosophy, had he confined himself to Ms 
last; videlicet, the labours of the forum; nor 
earlier yet, would Socrates have become the 
listener to Anaxagoras while he was yet engaged 
with the chisel in his father's shop, had he had 
any such notion. Nay, he who first spake it 
showed more of the spite of mortified vanity, 
than the sense of a wise man; for though a 
shoemaker's business be with the foot only, yet 
if he had made any use of his eyes he could not 
fail to be cognizant of other parts of the body 
also, in a country and time when men were so 
little chary of their skin, that there was scarcely 
any part thereof that did not daily see the sun. 
It hardly deserveth therefore the long cur- 
rency it hath had. 

" A little learning is a dangerous tiling"'' 

I know not whether, when Mr. Pope wrote 
these words, he had himself felt that his small 
knowledge of Greek had betrayed him into some 



52 OE VTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

inaccuracies in his translation of Homer, and 
therefore he was in anger with his own " little 
learning;" but this I do know, that the lines 
have been quoted largely to countenance an in- 
dolence that human nature is already too prone 
to, without the further aid of a popular poet. 
Form good sooth, he that never beginneth can 
never end; and he who would have much learn- 
ing, must begin his labours with a little; there- 
fore I do hold this to be one of those fallacies 
which throw an obstacle in the way of improve- 
ment, and therefore ought to be removed from 
the path. 

Science duly followed up doth elevate man 
to his greatest perfection; but even a small tinc- 
ture thereof is not unuseful, for thereby is the 
mind rescued from that utter brutishness which 
leaveth it the mere tool of sensual and animal 
desires; and he who seeketh learning because 
he would not leave unused any of Grod's good 
gifts, will be in no danger of drawing therefrom 
any of that idle vanity which hath no part in the 
character of a good Christian. Every approach, 
however distant, to the enjoyment and apprecia- 
tion of spiritual pleasures, — and of this class are 
learning and science, — is an approach also to- 
wards a capability of that immortality of spiritual 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINQS. 53 

happiness which is promised us, and they who 
discourage such attempts in those large classes 
of mankind that are necessitated to live hy their 
daily toil, do ill service to Grod, by arresting his 
creatures in their progress towards the fulfil- 
ment of their great end and aim. Why should 
not the humblest begin in this life the course of 
instruction which hereafter is to receive its com- 
pletion, in " knowing even as we are known?" 

" I will retire from business, and prepare for 
another world" 

Who is there who hath not heard some honest, 
painstaking man uttering some such saying as 
this, when old age is coming on? Yet well 
meant as this maybe, and plausible as it soundeth 
to the unthinking, I know no greater, though 
alack no more common error than this notion, 
that the common engagements of this world are 
a hinderance to our preparation for the next: 
for I do surely believe, and think I have the 
warrant of scripture and reason therefor, that we 
were sent into this probationary state to the end 
that our souls might learn experience among 
the diverse circumstances of active life, so as to 
know good from evil, and never to hazard the 
falling from glory when once attained, by any 



54 Or VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 

such mistake as was committed by those spirits 
that kept not their first estate. But if we retire 
from temptation, we deny ourselves the school- 
ing which Grod appointed for our better teaching, 
and so far from avoiding the temptation to evil, 
we increase it tenfold. For there is no such 
good friend to virtue as that useful weariness 
which leaveth no time for a selfish cogitation 
over the means of gratifying the animal nature : 
yea, he who, in his daily charge, be it what it 
may, hath been just and true, hath taken no 
undue advantage, nor oppressed any, if rich;— 
who hath served truly, and in no way defrauded 
his employers, either by negligence or dishonesty, 
if poor; — and who hath lived in Christian love 
and amity with all his fellow men, whether con- 
nected with him by blood or otherwise ; hath 
prepared well for another world, albeit his 
prayers may have been short, and his time 
actively employed, even to his dying day. 

It is not for our "much speaking" that we 
shall be heard; and the brief but earnest aspi- 
ration of the heart towards Grod, which a wise 
and good man doth use to sanctify the business 
of the day withal, while pursuing the avocations 
of this world; hath in it more of the vitality of 
religion, than the dawdling meditations of one 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 55 

who inaketh prayer the object of his life, rather 
than the means of leading that life aright. We 
pray for aid to perform our duties; but to use 
many prayers, and perform few duties, is but a 
mockery and a folly; for man thus disguiseth to 
his own conscience his cowardice and indolence, 
and fancieth that he is pious and virtuous, whilst 
in truth he is only idle and useless. Doubtless 
there is a time when increasing infirmity may 
make a man shrink from the fatigue of business 
which affbrdeth no respite from toil: but then 
this greater quietude is but a concession neces- 
sarily made to the needs of the body, and is not 
at all to be considered as the means of im- 
proving the health of the soul: on the contrary, 
we have all seen and know, that it must be a 
strong and well disciplined mind which can re- 
sist the natural propension towards the vices 
which arise out of this state of inaction; such 
as peevishness, selfishness, and consequent care- 
lessness of the comfort and happiness of others. 
When we entertain any doubt as to the 
soundness of our opinions, there is nothing 
which doth so strengthen and clear our appre- 
hension, as the recurring to what Lord Bacon 
doth well term the great book of Grod's works. 
Now we know that when Adam fell from his 



56 Or YTJLGAB EEROES EN" THE 

first estate, God imposed on him 'a law, which 
experience sheweth to be still the law of human 
nature, that" in the sweat of his brow he should 
eat bread." No man can propound to himself 
that the loving Father of all his works would 
either inflict a punishment for vengeance rather 
than for amendment on the first offender, or re- 
plenish the surface of this globe with beings 
disqualified, by the very law of their existence, 
from the pursuit and attainment of their ulti- 
mate good : we may, therefore, reasonably con- 
clude that the toil imposed on man was intended 
to be the strengthener and safeguard of his vir- 
tue, and to guide his frailty in the true path to 
life eternal. We see it to be the appointment 
of God, — for what he suffereth is so far his ap- 
pointment, that he might prevent it, and doth 
not : — I say we see it to be the appointment of 
God that millions must go forth to their daily 
toil, if they mean to eat their daily food : nay, 
the very necessity for food, which is the cause 
of this labour, is especially created by God. 
Then if such be the order written in the book 
of His works, we must, unless we are deter- 
mined to shut our eyes, and not read therein, 
conclude that retirement and inaction are not 
the circumstances best fitted for the develope- 



WAT OF COMMON" S ATI]* as. 57 

ment of the spiritual life within : which doth 
indeed rather thrive and flourish upon the ful- 
filled duty of each day ; even if it were no more 
than the conscientiously doing an honest day's 
work, for the allotted day's pay, whether seen 
or not : and in like manner, vice pineth and 
dieth in the mind, when quiet sleep, the result 
of labour, filleth the hours which are not given 
either to active employ ; or to the exercise of 
those kindly social affections, which so readily 
twine about the heart, when the space for 
then- enjoyment is short, and the zest of their 
enjoyment is not dulled by satiety. 

Instead therefore of seeking a discharge from 
all duty, as the means of improving the soul, 
whose true life is the fulfilment of duty, we 
should endeavour rather, as age approaches, to 
cut out for ourselves occupation sufficient for 
the diminished powers of the body, such as shall 
give room for the exercise of that concern for 
others, and carelessness of self, which form the 
best grace of youth, and which may still hover, 
like a bright halo round the head of age, making 
grey hairs lovely, and giving earnest, even in 
this life, of what will be the society of "just 
men made perfect," in the next. 



58 OF YTJLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

" The poor leetle that we tread upon, 
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
As when a giant dies." 

SHAKE SPEAEE. 

The poet hath sometimes a knowledge that may 
astound us of many things which, pertaining as 
they do, to human nature generally, he hath, as 
it were, with him in his closet, they being in his 
own spirit: but of those things which are ex- 
ternal to him he cannot have farther cognizance 
than others of his age and country ; and, regard- 
ing those, he doth only repeat, and thereby per- 
petuate, the fashion of his own times. And 
herein I note an error, inasmuch as his words 
oft times gain undue weight in those latter cases 
from his acknowledged skill in the first. For it 
doth in no way derogate from his marvellous 
powers, to say that such fashion of the time 
may be ill grounded, so far as regardeth science, 
since the business of the poet is to delectate 
the imagination, and mend the heart, by his 
lively pictures of human nature ; not to become 
a teacher of natural history or philosophy ; there- 
fore if, hi noting popular errors, I note also a 
mistake of the above quoted most honoured 



WaY OE COMMON SAYINGS. 59 

writer, I hold myself in no way disrespectful to 
his memory. 

Now I would commend to notice that though 
the fins of fish, in regard to the arrangement of 
the bones be typical of the human hand, no one 
will affirm them to be capable of executing the 
office whereto our hands are appointed; yet it 
would be expecting nearly such a miracle as the 
exercise of manual dexterity by a fish, were we 
to attribute the like power of feeling to a beetle, 
whose nerves are dependent on many separate 
ganglia, as belongeth to a being in whose large 
brain all the sensations conveyed by the spinal 
cord from the delicately sensitive skin, are con- 
centred, and held up, as it were, for reason to 
take cognizance of, and relieve them when pain- 
ful. Reasoning from analogy, we cannot either 
assert or credit this, for in the human body the 
action of the viscera is for the most part confided 
to the regulation of such a set of ganglia and 
their dependent nerves, connected but slightly 
with the brain; and no one needeth to be told 
that these actions do proceed with so little of 
consciousness on our part, that a man shall 
hardly know if his heart beateth or his stomach 
digesteth, save when disease interrupteth these 



60 OP VULGAR ERRORS IN THE 

functions : the natural conclusion herein would 
therefore be, even if direct experiment had not 
confirmed it, that a system of ganglia of this 
kind ministereth little, if at all, to sensation. 
And furthermore doth the beetle need human 
keenness ? Is it the wont of the Almighty to 
bestow powers which can never be exercised ? 
What purpose doth sensitiveness to pain serve, 
if not that of a faithful and ever ready monitor 
to make us vigilant against such accidents and 
circumstances as were formerly the occasion 
thereof? And to what shall it profit a worm 
beneath the sod that it should have power to 
feel, and a smarting reason to dread those haps 
and chances, against which it hath neither 
wit to devise, nor skill to execute defences ? 
Such a boon surely were a gift more worthy 
of a daemon, than of the Grod whose name is 
Love. And should any object to this scien- 
tific truth, that it may breed cruelty to G-od's 
creatures ; I answer that they are his crea- 
tures ; and, therefore, that while he who loveth 
cruelty would not be restrained, even if the 
beetle had a human frame; he that loveth God 
will respect even the smallest impress of his 
hand. Nor is our estimate of the greatness 
and goodness of the Creator hereby lessened, 



WAX OF COMMON" SAYINGS. 61 

but rather increased; inasmuch as where he 
hath not given means of escape, he hath not 
given acute sensibility to suffering. Let no 
man then call this an imperfection in his work; 
for in our humble way, even, if a man excel in 
fashioning the most exactly mechanical chrono- 
meter, who shall think it scorn if he make also 
a mousetrap ? on the contrary doth he not ra- 
ther, in that he can well make a trap for humble 
service, and a clock for time, to the guidance of 
the mariner in safety through long voyages, 
distantly image Him who hath placed the fish 
in the sea for its humble satisfaction, and man 
on the earth to prepare for eternity. Our God 
bestoweth no powers that cannot work for good ; 
— life, and consequently its preservation, is of 
value to man, inasmuch as it is the shell of the 
nut laid up for immortality, which shall hardly 
gain its full proportions if the shell be de- 
stroyed; to the animal of lower grade, life de- 
prived of sensual gratification would be a 
punishment ; they are, therefore, suffered to be- 
come the prey of other animals ere they suffer 
decrepitude, and their nervous system is such 
as maketh their doom no evil. 



62 OF VT7LGAE EEEOES 1ST THE 

"It is only a white lie.'''' 

Theee is nothing more harmful to virtue than 
the habit of dwelling always on the confines of 
vice; for as we find the borderers in all coun- 
tries do speak a sort of bastard tongue, which 
savoureth of both the neighbouring languages ; 
•so he who liveth always in the vicinage of evil, 
will hardly keep his good pure and unmixed. 
I have, therefore, many times wondered how 
the phrase of " white lies" came into so common 
usage ; for, if I mistake not, falsehood hath so 
much of the iEthiop about it, that no soap will 
wash it white. Nay, even its progeny at three 
or four removes, will still retain an ugly mulatto 
tinge. 

" It is only a white lie," saith one, " it harm- 
eth no one." But of such an one I would ask, 
harmeth it not thyself ? will thy memory be as 
strong if it be never exercised in accuracy of re- 
collection, as it will be where the anxiety never 
to trangress the exact truth, causeth a close 
attention to all circumstances, which are after- 
wards to be related as they happened, rather 
than embellished with imaginary adjuncts. Fur- 
thermore, doth any one ever tell a direct false- 
hood for the first time without embarrassment 



WAY OF COMMOX SAYINGS. 63 

and blushes ? and is not this the safeguard 
which G-od himself hath appointed to our virtue, 
so that the first step in evil being so painful, 
we shall have no inclination to make a second. 
Is it no harm to thee if by habit thou lose thy 
sensibility to this voice of the good Spirit of 
God, which is sent to guide thee in the right 
road to heaven ? Nay, even as regardeth our 
worldly convenience, it is rare if he who is known 
to tell " white lies" with so little of inward con- 
cern as to reveal no trace of it in his face, shall 
gain credit for his serious words. Confidence 
between man and man is thus shaken, and that 
most sweet consciousness of having striven to 
assimilate ourselves to Grod in the most essen- 
tial attribute of his being, is altogether lost. 

It is said of the philosopher Xenocrates, that 
when an oath was proffered to him, previous to 
giving his testimony in a court of justice, the 
Athenians with one voice cried out, that it was 
an insult to demand an oath from a man who 
never in his life had uttered a falsehood ; and 
he was not allowed to be sworn. Now it is to 
be noted of this philosopher, that when he was 
sent on an embassy to King Philip of Macedon, 
that astute monarch, after his departure, de- 
clared that Xenocrates was the only one of the 



64 OP YITLGAE EEEOES IN THE 

Athenian chiefs whom he had been unable to 
bribe. Such near frien ds are truth and honesty. 
And what is the object of these " white lies ?" 
Vanity it may be, that men may say we tell a 
good story ; or it may be that we seek to enter- 
tain the company by telling with a grave face 
to a friend some untruth, which if he believe, 
he shall thereby become an object of ridicule. 
But is this to be deemed an exact squaring of 
our actions by the golden rule of — " Do unto 
others as ye would they should do unto you ?" 
For, methinks, few do readily abide the being 
flouted and jeered at themselves, however well 
inclined they may be to jeer at others. And 
here again, the loss doth in the end redound to 
ourselves ; as indeed it doth whensoever we 
break any law of God ; for many a man hath 
lost a friend who would otherwise have been a 
true and a good one, by unseasonable jesting of 
this kind. And indeed I hold it generally to 
be a vulgar error, deserving of reprobation, to 
ismcj that God's laws are inscrutable, and hard 
to practise as regardeth this world ; for I know 
no precise law of the gospel which hath not a 
direct view to our well-being in this present 
world, insomuch that the very politeness which 
is enforced in society as requisite to the comfort 



WAT OF COMMON SAYINGS. 65 

and decorum thereof, is nothing more than a 
feeble copy of the Christian graces which Saint 
Paul hath enumerated in the thirteenth chapter 
of his first Epistle to the Corinthians. Without 
some truth we know well that society could not 
go on, and it is an ill cleverness which striveth 
to weigh how small a portion of it may serve 
worldly purposes; for the soul in the meantime 
is abridged of its proper food, and pineth and 
wasteth away in a hopeless atrophy. 



OF GENIUS. 

AMONG- the many errors common in the 
world, there is no one more common, or 
more hurtful, than the vulgar opinion respecting 
genius : namely, that it is an especial gift from 
heaven, whereby men become accomplished in 
science or art, without any sweat of their own 
brow ; a happiness which hath befallen no man, 
I think, since Adam : and yet we may daily 
hear persons excuse themselves from pm-suing 
this or that study, because "they have no genius 
for it" — a manifest self-deception; since ex- 
cepting in the instance of music, wherein the 
fineness of the organ supersedeth some of the 
rudimentary part of learning, and a child shall 
thus be found sometimes to accomplish at once, 
what to others would cost a longer application, 
I know of nothing that is to be gained without 
labour. Nay, even among these early prodi- 
gies, though for children, their skill be marvel- 
lous, yet if this precocious display of talent be 
not followed up by farther teaching and exerci- 



OF GENITJS. 67 

tations, maturer years will disappoint the early 
promise: and yet in this case the tools are in 
a measure ready made, and their use familiar: 
for the voice can execute without schooling, 
much of what the ear demandeth. But in other 
things it is not so — the painter must learn the 
art of mixing and laying on of colours by a deep 
study of the nature of the materials, and a long 
experience of then effect ; their " behaviour " 
under particular circumstances, as it may be an 
experimental chemist would shape his phrase. 
The sculptor, however great his conceptions, 
must learn to temper and mould the clay of his 
model, and to use the chisel skilfully : and if 
astistshad disdained this patient toil, and trusted 
to their heaven born genius, the world would 
never have been delectated by the sight of their 
works ; which yet we shall hear men term efforts 
of such sublime genius that no one who is not so 
gifted can ever hope to rival them. Could one 
of these supine admirers of excellence ask these 
men how they arrived at such a point of perfec- 
tion, both in their conception and execution, he 
would hear of days and nights devoted to unre- 
mitting toil with a perseverance which nothing 
could daunt : and will discover at last, that this 
envied gift of genius, is nothing else but a mind 



68 OE GENIUS. 

cultivated with an industry which others shrink 
from, through their laziness of intellect. The 
proper answer to a person who should thus laud 
an artist's genius at the expence of his diligence, 
exclaiming, "J should never accomplish this if 
I were to work for my whole life," — would be, 
" Work as I have done for two years only, and 
see what will come thereof." — But thou shalt 
find that thy admirer of genius will never con- 
sent to an application as severe as the so called 
gifted individual imposeth on himself; but will 
go away repeating his parrot like words, in the 
hope of satisfying himself in his supinity, and 
persuading both himself and others, that his 
idleness is no sin ; and so he will fancy that he 
hath established an axiom, when he hath only 
delivered himself of a declaration that he is 
too indolent ever to excel. 

Nor is this true in regard to art alone ; for 
the mathematician, however powerful his mind, 
must submit to long and wearisome calculations: 
the chemist, the natural philosopher, the anato- 
mist, must trace the course of nature with pa- 
tient toil, ere they attain to any of those disco- 
veries, which, when made, are hailed by the 
world as the offspring of an almost divine in- 
tellect. Kepler was contented to devote two 



OF GENIUS. 69 

and twenty years to his calculations, ere he was 
enabled to publish those true views of science 
which have made his name immortal. Never 
did any coin come fresher, and sharper stamped, 
from the very mint of genius : for those views 
overturned all the time honoured notions of 
circular movements among the heavenly bodies, 
and introduced that new principle of the ellipse, 
which has led to all that mastership of astrono- 
mical science that later observers have attained 
to. But had he suffered his indolence to have 
whispered to him during the failures and diin- 
culties of that long period, — " It is useless to 
pursue this, which I have evidently no genius 
for ; eight or ten years have been wasted in try- 
ing to advance, and I have made no progress," 
— the world would have lost one of the brightest 
names in the list of its great men ; and mari- 
ners might still have been exposed to those 
fearful dangers of the sea, which his discove- 
ries in science have now taught men so far to 
master. But Kepler had confidence in human 
nature, and he persevered. 

Doubtless it is the man who feeleth most 
deeply the nobleness of the gift of reason which 
Grod hath bestowed upon him, who will address 
himself the most diligently to the work of 



70 of gesttjs. 

making it available " for the glory of the Crea- 
tor, and the relief of man's estate," — and this, 
as I believe, is the true secret of genius. He 
trusteth to his Lord, that the talent entrusted 
to him will bring rich interest, if it be duly used, 
and he doth so use it ; for in this trade there is 
no fear of bankruptcy. Wrapped in the napkin, 
it doth but tarnish, and cometh back to the 
hands of his Lord the worse for its want of wear. 
Let him then who would have genius, wrestle 
for it as the patriarch Jacob wrestled with the 
angel of the Lord, and though the night-long 
struggle may leave his body the weaker, his 
point will have been gained. 



OF SOME EEEOES EESPECTING THE 
NATUEE OF EYIL SPIEITS. 

WHILST treating of vulgar and frequent 
errors in men's notions of things, me- 
thrnks those which are so generally current re- 
specting evil spirits, deserve specially to be ex- 
amined ; for not only he there many falsehoods 
thus received as truths, but these falsehoods do 
minister, as it were, and pander to the ill dis- 
positions of men ; and furnish an excuse where- 
with to salve a wounded conscience, without 
applying the sharp caustic of a true and fruit 
bearing repentance. And truly the common 
and vulgar notion of the Evil One, doth so much 
trench upon the attributes of God, that when 
we have, according to the adage, " given the 
devil his due," — such as the vulgar apprehen- 
sion of the great mass of the people doth make 
it, I know not what distinction we leave for the 
Deity. For the common notion is, that the de- 
vil doth tempt us to evil by suggestions whereof 
we have no note but the feeling such or such 



72 OF SOME EEEOES EESPECTING 

thoughts or desires ; and of the millions which 
are now living on the face of the earth, almost 
every one at this moment that I am writing, 
will be sensible of something within or without 
him that warreth against perfection. "It is the 
devil — the tempter," — saiththeunreasoning be- 
liever: but is he then omnipresent, the attribute 
of Infinity ? His suggestions, it is said, are to 
our thoughts; but what can read them save Om- 
niscience? Is God so wont to give his honour 
to another, that he will thus throw two of the 
brightest jewels of his crown of perfection to a 
creature in rebellion against him ? " It is for the 
trial of our faith," saith the unreasoning be- 
liever: then doth the temptation come primarily 
from G-od : but this Scripture doth forbid us to 
conceive; for saith the Apostle, "Let no man 
say he is tempted of God, when he is led away 
of his own lusts, and enticed,"* by that animal 
nature, namely, which we hold in common with 
the brutes, and which requireth the control of 
the rational part of us to keep it within due 
bounds, so that the soul may not be imbued with 
the taint of unruly earthly desires. And this 
notion of the extreme power of the devil is the 

* James i. 13, 14. 



THE 15TATUBE OP ETIL SPIEITS. 73 

growth of the last two or three centuries ; for 
we shall find all the legendary tales of the mid- 
dle ages, figuring the evil spirit with the cha- 
racteristics of the satyr of the Ethnicks ; easily 
foiled and cheated by man, and vanquished 
often, in strength or in wit, by the saint whom 
he assailed, by bodily, not by spiritual tempta- 
tions ; for I know of no instance among early 
legends, when the tempter is represented as a 
merely spiritual being. 

Good Doctor Martin Luther, who may be 
considered as the father of our reformed 
churches, speaketh of devils visiting his chamber 
in the shapes of animals; a clear deception of the 
senses, caused by undue excitement of the brain; 
but also in his calmer moments he describeth 
devils as melancholy spirits, inhabiting marshes, 
and desolate places, and ruins; and not by any 
means as having that ubiquity which is now 
attributed to the universal tempter. Now this 
description of the devil, given by him, is exactly 
that which the ancients did give of their laifiaiv, 
or dcenion, by the which word they described 
the spirit of a dead man after it had quitted the 
body: for they, conceiving it to have a separate 
existence, did imagine it to be a wandering, and 
somewhat unhappy being, specially inhabiting 



74 OE SOME EEEOES EESPECTENG 

deserts and desolate places, or marshy forests, 
such as were then to be found in Britain; which 
country was, for that cause, then thought to he 
a special residence of daemons. Nor was this 
word understood by the Greeks in a had sense ; 
for every disembodied spirit was, in their phrase, 
a daemon ; good, or bad, according to the dis- 
position of the former man. In those days, 
when the apparently eternal stars were held to 
be spiritual existences, self moved, and divine? 
it was an easy transition to imagine the bright 
ignes fatui, so commonly seen in the night in 
marshy places, to have a something of this di- 
vinity also, and thus it came to be thought that 
if the stars were gods, these fiery exhalations 
which did glance and move about, now seen 
and now disappearing, were the appearances of 
that half divinity, the soul of man : and thus 
came the marshes of Britain and other places, 
to be peopled in imagination with these daemons, 
or disembodied souls : a belief which, like the 
Zabianism, or star worship, whereof it was 
part and parcel, did spread nearly over the 
world in former times. 

But there was also a form of this Zabianism 
which grew into more fame about the time of 
Darius the son of Hystaspes, through the inter- 



THE tfATTTBE OF EYIL SPIEITS. 75 

vention of Zoroaster, under the title of the Ma- 
gian doctrine ; whereby the influences of the 
world were held to be divided between the Good 
and Evil principle; the one typified by the sun 
and light, — the other by the night and dark- 
ness ; these two principles being co-eternal, and 
in constant opposition to each other. This doc- 
trine, which spread widely over the Persian em- 
pire and its dependencies, tainted, in many in- 
stances, the later Jewish faith, no less than that 
of daemons which they had learned from the 
Greeks, and haply also from the Egyptians : 
and in the embodiment of Satan, first in the 
book of Job, written at a time when Zabianism 
was prevalent,* and after that in the writings 
of the Rabbins, we find a mixture of the Magian 
Evil Principle, and the Greek daemon, with 
somewhat of their own faith besides. This was 
the prevalent superstition in the times of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ : and all violent diseases 
were held to be caused by the intervention of 
daemons, or souls of dead men, who, when ill 
disposed, were supposed to enter into the living 
body of another man, and thus to inflict tor- 
ment upon the person thus possessed ; which 

* See Job xxxi. 26—28. 



76 OF SOME EBBOES BESPECTEtfG 

superstition our Saviour doth well describe 
when he illustrateth his rebuke to the men of 
that generation, by the example of the unclean 
spirit, that when expelled, walketh through de- 
sert, or desolate places, till he finally retumeth 
with a company of seven others worse than him- 
self, to torment the same man : in which de- 
scription we see plainly that the spirit here spoken 
of was none other than the before mentioned 
caifiijjv of the Greeks, as well as the devil of the 
famous Doctor Martin Luther. But now, to the 
unlearned much confusion of ideas hath arisen 
from the constant translation of ccu'^wv, or 
dcemon, by devil ; because they attach to this 
latter word a meaning which it is likely the 
first translators never meant to give to it, 
" He hath a devil and is mad,"* is a descrip- 
tion at once of the assumed disease, and the 
imagined cause thereof. 

I have many times thought that it was owing 
to the lofty and grandiose descriptions given in 
the Paradise Lost, that men, since the time when 
that poem came to be popular, have invested 
Satan with a kind of attributes never before 
assigned to him ; and as was natural to the 

* John x. 20. Aai/xoviov !%a /cat /xaiverai. 



THE NATURE OE EVIL SPIRITS. 77 

increasing spirituality of religion, have more and 
more divested him of the notion of locality and 
form, till the Evil One of this age is become in 
effect and conceit of men, the Evil Principle of 
the Magians : i.e. a power co-existing with, and 
warring against the will of the good Deity. And 
this, I must note as a most pestilent error, equally 
unauthorized by Scripture and by reason: and 
if any shall imagine this notion of theirs to be 
borne out by some passages which are freely 
quoted on such occasions, I must remind the 
unlearned reader, first, that as I have said 
already, many passages translated devil are in 
the original daemon (^aifjuov) and that when the 
word diabolus QiajSoXog) occurreth, this term, 
in common parlance, meaneth an accuser or 
slanderer, as when the apostle reproacheth the 
women who are didboli, i.e. slanderers.* It is 
to be farther borne in mind that the Christians of 
that day were pursued by the heathen with all 
manner of calumnies : and this will help us to 
the true application of many of the passages 
where this word is used in the Epistles of 



*1 Tim. iii. 11. TvvdiKag waavTOjQ (rsfivag (xtj dia- 
fioXsg . . .Tit. ii. 3. UptcfivTiSag hxravTojg kv Kararfj- 
jxan hpoTrps.'ntiQ \ir\ SiafioXovg... 



78 OP SOME EEKOES RESPECTING 

the Apostles; where it generally applies to those 
accusers of the faithful: as when, 1 Tim. iii. 7, 
it is required that the bishop shall have a good 
report from them which are without, i.e. the 
heathen, " lest he fall into reproach, and the 
snareofthe slanderer ," or informer ■* QiafioXov.) 
In like manner the apostle Peter, in the fourth 
chapter of his first epistle, having warned his 
converts not to be terrified at the fiery trial 
of persecution, proceedeth in chap. v. 8,t to 
recommend them to be sober minded and vigi- 
lant; because their slanderous accuser was walk- 
ing daily among them, seeking his prey : whom 
they were to resist, by steadfastly adhering to 
their Christian faith ; knowing also that not the 
Christians only, but their brethren that were 
in the world, i.e. the unconverted heathen 



* AeT Sk avrbv Kal fiaprvpiav KaXrjv lx HV ^ L7ro T & v 
£%(jj6ev, 'iva fit] eig oveiCicrfibv kinrkay /cat Trayida rov 
diafSoXov. 

+ 'Nri-ipars, yprjyoprjcrara' on 6 dvridiicog vfxutv 8id(3o- 
Xog, <hg Xsojv upvo/xevog irepnraTU ZrjTwv riva Ka.Ta.7riy. 
tpy dvTi^7]Te <?eptoL ry rri^ei, eicoreg rd avrd ru>v iraQy- 
[xdrojv ry iv kou/mij vfiwv dceX(p6rr]n k7rireXu(ydat' 
wherein it may be observed that the lack of the Article 
to the word diabolus doth deprive it of its Substantive 
sense and make it in a manner an Adjective to dvrlci- 
Kog. 



THE NATURE OF EYIL SPIRITS. 79 

suffered the like afflictions. For it is well known 
that from the days of Tiberius, downwards, the 
informers so frequently held up to detestation 
by Tacitus the historian, under the title of de- 
latores, were the very scourge of society : no 
man being safe from then pestilent accusations. 
Much more might be said which the learned 
critic will not want my aid to discover, and 
which to the unlearned would haply seem wea- 
risome, I shall not, therefore, pursue this exami- 
nation of words, but call upon those who have 
hitherto so lightly received this notion respect- 
ing the great might of the tempter, to review it 
by the light of reason and common sense : for 
where were the goodness of Grod, had he endowed 
a wicked Spirit with such power over the minds 
of men, as to leave them small chance of dis- 
thiguishing between his suggestions and those 
of the ever blessed Spirit of Grace ? Such a thing 
cannot be for a moment supposed of the loving 
Father, who hath so cared for our well being 
in all things : we may, therefore, well conclude, 
that be these fallen angels what they may, as 
to their inherent nature and state, their influ- 
ence over us must be very slight, if not alto- 
gether null: and the worst tempter will be 
found to be that evil spirit in a fair form, — the 



80 EBKOES [RESPECTING EVIL SPIRITS. 

corrupt soul of man; for bad companions are for 
the most part the real seducers of the unwary; 
and it is not an invisible suggestion that 
leadeth us astray, but early misgovernment, and 
the remembrance of evil books, evil conversa- 
tion, and evil example which taint us with the 
infection of sin; a poison which may be met 
by the antidote of wise and holy instruction 
previously administered, but which when re- 
ceived without such preparation is for the most 
part deadly. Thus bad men by making them- 
selves the willing promoters of sin here, fit 
themselves to be the companions of the Evil 
One hereafter, and are indeed his angels or 
agents upon earth. 



4 

444 

44*44 

4444444 

444 
4 



« v*ff\j JtJK> «a?^> J&» k/%K» »/m> i/vli «AF« «ATU iAI\) iATU 
" "•^cy* '^jy* *\!v* ^i^w r \^v* '\^v* *vy* ""^y •v^* , ^|(y , r \A^ 



AN INQUIEY IF IGNOEANCE BE 
EEQTJISITE TO INNOCENCE. 

PLAUSIBLE errors be like wild roses: they 
bear indeed here and there a pleasant blos- 
som, bnt it soon falleth : and their thick offsets 
do choke the growth of better things. Among 
these well sounding errors, I reckon the notion 
held by some, that innocence is only to be pre- 
served by ignorance of evil. Trnly it were a 
pleasant thing to him who is weary of contem- 
plating the vices and miseries of mankind, to 
think that there were means of closing eyes, and 
ears, and understanding, so as never to have 
cognizance of these ills : but it is childish to 
sigh after what is clearly impossible; and even 
were this possible, I doubt much if our happi- 
ness, either present or future, would be so great 
as now it may be, if we do only avail ourselves 
of the real use of knowing the evil, by choosing of 
our own free will the good, and persevering in 
the pursuit thereof. For to Jcnoiv evil, and to 
do it, are two widely different things , 
G 



82 AS INQUIEY IF IGNOEANCE 

The only man who ever had full cognizance 
of human nature, was he who being himself the 
bodily shrine of the Deity, and his own human 
soul in perfect union with its Divine Prototype, 
could measure the influences of the corporeal on 
the spiritual by mere self-examination ; and we 
may well believe that when the ever blessed 
God, as Saint Clement of Alexandria doth 
strongly express it, came as a man, in order 
through human lips" to teachman how he might 
become a God," and to be as the Apostle hath it, 
" an ensample " for our imitation, we may walk 
safely under his guidance. Now a very few 
words of his enemies' reproaches will show 
that the saying of the heathen, homo sum et 
humani nihil a me alienum puto, was not inap- 
plicable to him. He was called by those who, 
in that age also, thought a separation from the 
evil world the best safeguard of innocence, " a 
glutton and a wine bibber; a friend of publicans 
and sinners,' ' which terms being taken with that 
largeness of interpretation which belongeth to 
the slanders of an enemy,— who generally hath 
skill enough to ground his ill sayings upon some 
apparent truth, — would seem to show that this 
only perfect man who ever trod this earth of 
ours, mixed among all sorts ; as if to show the 



BE KEQETSITE TO INNOCENCE. 83 

beauty of holiness, contrasted with the ugliness 
of vice; and thus to win men from their sins, by 
making them love virtue better. God, who 
knoweth all things, seeth every day more sin 
than the worst of us would care to talk of in 
common society; yet that complete knowledge 
of evil, though it saddened, did not corrupt the 
human soul of the Saviour ; he wept for his 
"brethren according to the flesh;" — abhorred 
vice, yet loved man ; — lived among us, — lived 
among us too at a season when evil was rife, and 
when the corruption of society generally had 
arrived at a point that required no less an inter- 
vention than that of God himself to check it. 
All this he saw and knew, and yet, — with all 
the infirmities, passions, and temptations of a 
man, — he passed the dangerous season of youth 
unspotted ; happy in his spiritual union with 
God, and ready to bear all that evil men could 
inflict, in order to ensure that union to all 
eternity. 

But he "came for our ensample:" innocence 
therefore is made of other stuff than ignorance ; 
yea we shall find that it is a substantive rather 
than a negative quality ; and consisteth not so 
much in a mere absence of evil, — for then the 
house might be only swept and garnished to 



84 AN" OTQTJIEY IE ia^OEANCE 

make it a readier home for the daemon when he 
cometh, — as in the presence of good which 
leaveth no room for him to enter. 

And now, having shown that the ignorance 
of evil is not necessary to innocence, the question 
remaineth, which to parents and teachers is an 
anxious one, how the knowledge of it may he 
communicated without peril to virtue ? — and 
here again that perfect "ensample " leaveth us 
not to doubt. The knowledge of evil, along 
with all other knowledge, was communicated to 
the mind of the child at the earliest age wherein 
it can receive knowledge ; since as his human 
constitution was perfect in soul and body, so 
the spiritual union with the Deity was also com- 
plete from the first : therefore, to Christ, it was 
among the first of his recollections as a human 
being. Doth not this show us that the ordinary 
course is wrong? We are wont to keep the 
knowledge of ill from our children as long as 
possible, so as for the most part to leave it to be 
instilled into them by those who have a design 
to corrupt, and therefore paint it in fair colours. 
It was not so that the young child at Nazareth 
was educated ; — he who, alone, of all men, was 
educated by God himself. He saw, — for God's 
own knowledge was in him, — the full ugliness 



BE BEQTJTSITE TO ENTTOCEIS'CE. 85 

of vice, and all its eternal consequences, long 
ere the animal frame had arrived at the point 
when the voice of the tempter might have its 
charms; and we have seen the results; strange, 
that we should never yet have thought of try- 
ing the same plan! I do most assuredly think 
that more make shipwreck of their virtue out of 
a childish and natural curiosity and inquisitive- 
ness after new things, than out of any inherent 
love of evil, and that were the constitution of ani- 
mal nature early set forth to the child by parents 
or teachers, with that gravity which becometh 
them; and none of those allurements of sensual 
pleasure held out, which are the great weapons 
of the tempter; the child, knowing all that he 
wisheth to know, at a time when as yet the pas- 
sions are not awakened, would turn his thoughts 
to other objects of more import, and greater 
nobleness; and feel disgusted rather than allured 
by the conversation of the impure and vicious in 
after life: and this I say from experience and 
conviction, no less regarding youth of one sex 
than the other. I would speak thus, and indeed 
have so spoken with good effect — " My child, 
man, in his compound nature, belongeth to two 
worlds: by this mortal and perishable body he 
is bound to earth, and partaketh of the nature 



86 AIT INQUIRY IF IGNORANCE 

of the beasts ; his internal constitution is almost 
the same, he is generated, horn, and dieth like 
them; but in his soul he holdeth something of 
the nature of God, and hath the promise that if 
he duly cherish this divine spark, he shall fin ally- 
enjoy the felicity proper to God himself. We 
are placed in this world to choose between ani- 
mal and spiritual enjoyment; for happiness can 
only be the result of having and doing what we 
like to have and do ; and therefore God leaveth 
us free. If we bind ourselves to earth by cherish- 
ing all our animal propensions, and thinking 
about all that pertaineth to our animal nature, 
rather than to our spiritual, then we, having fixed 
all our pleasures here, can never enjoy any other 
kind of life ; and when this faileth us, which it 
doth gradually in age, and entirely in death, we 
have nothing left but useless regrets : whereas 
if we only give the body so much consideration 
as shall keep it hi health, and devote ourselves 
to the pleasures of the mind; then we are every 
day becoming more fit for the happiness God 
hath promised us. Surely we are more noble 
than the beasts, and it is pleasant to feel our own 
dignity; yet he that talketh and thinketh only 
of the things of the body, seemeth to forget that 
he hath a rank above them. Would a woman 



BE EEQTJISITE TO INNOCENCE. 87 

wish to become no better than a cow; a useful 
animal, with no thought above bringing her off- 
spring into the world, and caring for their food? 
Is man formed with a divine soul merely to run 
the wild career of an untamed colt ; to be bro- 
ken by stripes to do his part in this world, with 
no thought beyond it?" Should questions arise 
out of such a conversation, let them be answered 
fairly, gravely, and tridy. Let the child know 
what his mother suffered in giving him birth : 
he will love her the better, and when he cometh 
to man's estate, that thought of bitter suffering, 
and danger to life, will make the jest of the 
libertine sound to his ears like the laugh of the 
executioner. Nor, because I here use the mas- 
culine gender, would I confine this knowledge 
to that sex only: women no less than men must 
look into the depths of life, ere they will be 
able to make that free choice of the good, 
whereon our eternal felicity doth depend : 
women no less than men are exposed to the 
arts of the tempter, and have no less need that 
the childish hand should be trained to use the 
weapons of defence. Gratify the young mind 
by bringing before it the wonders of science, 
not as a drudgery, but a recreation : accustom 
the child to seek knowledge as a pleasure, and 



Sb A2T INQUIRY IF IGITOBA^CE 

there is little fear that youth will be misspent, 
or old age contemptible. 

And here too, we may recur to the education 
of the Saviour, of whose childhood two things 
are recorded — the first, that at twelve years old 
he astonished the doctors in the temple by his 
thirst for knowledge, and the share of it which 
he had already acquired; — the other, that this 
true science, thus bestowed by his Divine Father 
and Tutor, had no evil effect on his human soul; 
but that he returned to his home, showed all 
filial duty to his far more ignorant parents, and 
won the affection of all by his amiable manners. 
So true is it that real knowledge causeth no 
vanity. And herein, before I conclude, I would 
note one error more common and more fatal 
than all the rest. Whilst contemplating the 
Divine AOrOS which spake by the lips of 
Jesus of Nazareth, we too often forget his com- 
plete human nature, and whilst bowing in dis- 
tant adoration to the ineffable Deity, we over- 
look the man in whom he enshrined his glory. 
But God doth nothing in vain ; he could have 
spoken to us in the whirlwind, or have written 
his commands in characters of fire before our 
eyes : but he chose to come among us as one of 
ourselves : he sought to lead us back to him by 



BE KEQTTISITE TO INNOCENCE. 8U 

means of our social affections : to show a human 
being so amiable that we might love, and imitate 
because we loved him. Surely then it is the 
greatest of all errors to cast away the benefits 
of such an "ensample," and although Christ 
lived in this world upwards of thirty years, to 
turn our attention only to his death. If his life 
had no benefit for us, why did he go through 
all the stages of childhood and youth ? a better 
notion is it which I have lately seen expressed. 
" Christ," says the author, " showed himself 
among us only as a child and a young man. 
He well knew that he who followed his steps 
so far, would need no guide for his old age." 



«\ey r \£y *jy *jy *\ty* •w* f w» '^jy *jv* *jy «vy» *\iv* 
»/wV» J&» jw» j%k J%\} j&» «/m. «/6fU «/fl\» «AFU c/vv* «a!\i 



OF EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 

IT would seem strange that in an age which 
doth boast itself as literary, there should be 
any need to enumerate errors of this kind, as 
prevalent among those who have received what 
in common parlance is called a good, or liberal 
education : yet, from whatever cause, whether 
from carelessness, or conceit of knowledge 
which maketh study needless, it is a thing cer- 
tain that many barbarisms have crept into the 
writing and speaking of English, which a mode- 
rate knowledge of grammar would have pre- 
vented. It was indeed a common saying in the 
last age, that this English tongue of ours hath 
no forms of grammar proper to it; and that 
therefore reading and writing do, as goodman 
Dogberry is made to say, " come by nature," 
without the necessity for any study thereof, save 
such as is gained by the exercise in the Latin 
and Greek tongues which in "grammar schools" 
is required. Yet he who should fancy that he 
could leam German phraseology and idiom by 



OF EEEOES Iff GEAMMAE. 91 

the study of Latin, would be laughed to scorn 
by all : why then should it be imagined that 
the sister dialect hath in it less of grammatical 
peculiarity ? 

Unfortunately for lingual purity, the study 
of grammar hath in it little to captivate the 
imagination ; and most seem to shrink there- 
from with a kind of horror, the result of the 
severities of early pseclagogues ; and this ren- 
dereth the correction of such like errors a task 
of almost hopeless difficulty: yet that I may 
acquit mine own conscience, and be in no way 
an accessory to the murder of the king's or 
queen's English, I shall endeavour to point out 
some of the principal modes of defacing and 
injuring this our ancient tongue. 

I will note in the first place the confusion 
made in the cases of pronouns by persons of 
good learning in other matters, for though it 
be well known that in the Teutonic family of 
languages generally, the four cases chiefly to be 
noted in the Greek, from whence the old Teu- 
tones appear to have derived the main structure 
of then' language, — do exist, — namely the nomi- 
native, genitive, dative, and accusative : and 
though it be equally well known that our tongue 
is of that family, and so cognate to the Grerman 



92 OP EEEOES IN" GEAMMAE. 

that the natives of that great country do speak 
English with a facility unknown to any of the 
southern nations of Europe, — yet in practice is 
this matter wholly disregarded; and nominative 
and accusative are strangely interchanged, to 
the great discomfort of ears trained to gram- 
matical accuracy. Thus you or ye may be used 
indifferently in the nominative; but you is 
always the accusative and dative: and preposi- 
tions, it is well known, do not admit a nomi- 
native case to follow them. Yet shall we find 
poets defacing their pages with such oversights 
as disgrace the following passage, which for its 
poetic force and depth of feeling, did well de- 
serve a less careless phraseology. 

" Oh serious eyes, how is it that the light, 

The burning rays that mine pour into ye, 

Still find ye cold, and dead, and dark as night % 

Oh lifeless eyes, can ye not answer me ? 

Oh lips whereon mine own so often dwell, 

Hath love's warm, fearful, thrilling touch, no spell 

To waken sense in ye ? Oh misery ! 

Oh breathless lips, can ye not speak to me V 

Here ye occurs five times, and twice only is it 
in its proper place as the nominative of the 
verb : in each of the others it is either governed 
by a preposition or a verb transitive, and there- 
fore should have been you. To an ear accus- 



OF EEEOES m GEAMMAE. 93 

tomed to a right construction of language such 
a fault is not a little offensive, and the beauty 
of poetry is as much vitiated thereby, as if, in 
the human visage, the eye and eyebrow should 
be continually changing their relative position, 
and sometimes the one, sometimes the other, 
should take the upper place. 

Furthermore there groweth out of this disre- 
gard of the just declension of pronouns by some 
authors of good repute, a notion that they are 
in fact indeclinable, and that therefore the cases 
must always be expressed by cncumlocutions. 
Thus many a pretender to fine writing would 
fancy he had done well by using the preposition 
of, in lieu of the genitive case, and will say, of 
whom, rather than, tohose ; although, according 
to the grammar and idiom of our tongue, the 
use of the genitive whose be far the more pro- 
per : for the one relative pronoun who, is thus 
declined, 

Mas. Fern. Neut. 

Norn. Who Which 

Gen. Whose Which 

Dat. & Ace. Whom Which 

and the idiom of the Teutonic family of lan- 
guages doth require, for beauty and strength of 
expression, the use of the genitive case, wherever 
the hissing sound thereof doth not so far make 



94 OP EREOES IN GEAMMAE. 

it unpleasant to the ear as to require it to be 
avoided euphonies gratia. 

Beside this confusion in the pronouns, another 
error doth very commonly find place in conversa- 
tion and periodical publications, and sometimes 
also in writers of a better order ; namely, the 
putting of an adverb where the true construc- 
tion of the language doth require a conjunction. 
The true place of the adverb, as the name doth 
in a measure import, is after the verb, i.e. added 
to it, while the conjunction goeth before it ; yet 
we shall commonly hear the adverbs of time 
directly and immediately, placed in the stead 
of the conjunctive phrase as soon as. If the 
adverb be ever allowed a place before the verb 
in good writing, it is then merely a companion 
of a preposition giving intensity and preciseness 
to it,as it doth also in somecases to anoun adjec- 
tive, as ' directly after hearing' — ' immediately 
on hearing' — or with an adjective, as ' directly 
good' — 'immediately relative to' — but never 
should it be used in the fashion of — ' directly 
he heard' — instead of ' as soon as he heard.' 

Then again we find all writers and teachers 
eschewing with especial care, the placing of a 
preposition at the end of a sentence : yet in the 
Hocli Teutsch, or German, which is the younger 



OP EEEOES EN" GEA1IMAE. 95 

sister of English Saxon, it is a rule that under 
certain circumstances it shall be so placed ; and 
in the racy, idiomatic language of our elder 
writers it is frequently found to be so ; though 
perhaps few discover why this style to our ears 
soundeth better and more forcible. Inclined to, 
— hoped for, and the like, are phrases of this 
nature, and as happily this old Saxon form re- 
taineth its hold in the spoken, though it be 
losing it in the written language, we may per- 
adventure hope that writers will at last find out 
that when addressing English ears, they should 
use the English tongue. 

There is another fault heard frequently in 
common parlance, but not yet, as I think, writ- 
ten ; videlicet, the use of the noun adjective 
like with a verb and its nominative, a position 
which it hath no claim to, in the room of the 
conjunction as. Thus we shall hear school 
boys and young college men say ' I did that like 
he did,' instead of — l as he did' — an error, which 
though it have not yet found its way into print, 
will do so ere long, unless this mode of speaking 
be corrected. 

And so much may suffice for the errors in 
grammar of such as are by courtesy supposed 
well instructed on such points. But there is a 



96 OE EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 

further error in books especially devoted to the 
science which is of yet greater import, as it not 
unfrequently may vitiate the sense of a transla- 
tion, and thus deceive the unlearned reader. 
Every foreigner who would learn English,know- 
eth to his cost, that if in the just use of shall, 
and will, lieth one of the main beauties of the 
language, so also doth its greatest difficulty: yet 
it is for him both sad and strange that no one 
hath clearlyset it forth in any work of grammar. 
In such works I do constantly find the future 
tense of verbs written I shall or will as though 
their use were indifferent : a fault which leadeth 
to many mistakes, and much mockery of stran- 
gers, by those who from long habit have gained 
the true use of these words. Neither is this 
without ill effect in the most important of all 
writings ; for in more than one passage in Holy 
Writ acareless putting of one word for the other 
by the translators doth strangely confound our 
understanding thereof. Eor according to com- 
mon usage, which in a living and spoken tongue 
is the best rule of signification, the simple future 
tense runneth thus, 

I shall We shall j 

Thou wilt Ye will > go 
He will They will ) 



OF EEEOES IN GEAMMAE. 97 

and if any one will change this arrangement, he 
will perceive that he sayeth not what he meaneth 
to express ; as is well seen in the oft repeated 
jest of the Frenchman in the water, exclaiming 
"I icill be drowned — nobody shall help me," 
wherein by confounding the different persons 
of the simple future tense, an extraordinary per- 
version of sense is occasioned. Let us but re- 
verse the order thus 

I will We will \ 

Thou shalt Ye shall > go 
He shall They shall ) 

and we shall find that in this form, which for 
distinction's sake I shall call the second future; 
it hath an imperative force not by any means 
belonging to the first. And though this dis- 
tinction be wanting in those modern tongues 
which are derived from the Latin, which hath it 
not, yet we find it to exist in some measure in 
the Greek, which hath an imperative future ; 
and in the Hebrew, which hath besides the sim- 
ple active voice, and the future thereunto be- 
longing, another voice which is causative : the 
future whereof partaketh of the nature of our 
second future, as above noted, and this voice the 
Rabbins are wont to call Siphil. Now in that 
passage of the book of Genesis where the Loed 

H 



98 OF EEEOES IN GEA1IMAE. 

GrOD is said to speak to Adam and his wife after 
their transgression, the tense used is not in 
Hiphil, hut in the simple active future, notwith- 
standing which the translators have rendered 
it by ' thou slialt? whereby the notions of the 
unlearned are much confounded, and they do 
rather see therein a stern judge condemning, 
than a good father telling his children the 
necessary consequences of what they had done ; 
they having been forewarned that, according to 
the nature given them, such consequences must 
ensue. A serious evil resulting from a seem- 
ingly small grammatical fault ! 

It might well nigh be thought from the com- 
monness of this confusion in books professing to 
treat on grammar, that the English nation was 
jealous of all others, and resolved by keeping 
the key of their language in a labyrinth, to pre- 
vent any but themselves from attaining to the 
use thereof: a great reproach to the people, 
were it true ; but scarcely a less reproach is it, 
that there should be so general an ignorance of 
grammar rules as to render the right speaking 
our language a matter of custom only, no one 
being able to give any good reason therefor. 






OF CERTAIN ERRORS CURRENT IN 

REGARD TO DISEASE AND 

MEDICINE. 

IN times past when a man fell sick, lie was 
wont, if lie were great enough to find that 
expense practicable, to send to some oracle for 
counsel; as Ahaziah, albeit he might have 
known better, seeing that he was of Israelitish 
blood, sent messengers unto Baal, the god of 
flies, at Ekron, to inquire concerning the dis- 
ease he was suffering from ; and if this habit 
infected even the people chosen to be the de- 
positaries of the truth, we may well guess how 
prevalent it must have been among the heathen. 
To this succeeded the belief in particular shrines 
of Christian saints, and you shall even yet see, 
it may be, in some chapel of this kind in a re- 
mote place, where the ancient superstition sur- 
viveth merely under a change of name, as great 
a number of ex voto offerings of silver and 
waxen eyes, legs, arms, and the like, as ever 
covered the walls of the temple atDelphi. Now- 



100 OE EEEOES T$ EEGAED TO 

adays superstitions of this kind have taken a 
fresh course, and notwithstanding that they no 
longer enrich the priests of iEsculapius, or of 
Apollo, or of Isis, they nevertheless set up for 
themselves some living idol, and he being sup- 
posed, like the Pythoness of old, to be inspired 
with a certain divine afflatus, they pay their 
offerings to him as religiously as ever did any 
ancient votary of the god or the saint, and trust 
to him with as implicit a faith ; witness the tales 
I have heard of a certain Mr. St. John Long, 
who, in regard to the excoriations he practised 
upon his votaries, might haply be considered as 
an avatar of that Ekronitish god of flies, whose 
fame tempted even the king of Israel to apply- 
to him: for with the aid of some French or 
German critic I doubt not it might be proved 
that Baal-zebub was none other than an em- 
plastrum of cantharides. 

But leaving that matter to those who are 
skilled in such etymologies, I will affirm that 
there is no medical practitioner of good sense 
and erudition who doth not regret that any such 
oracular veneration should be bestowed on him, 
seeing that it is for the most part no less harm- 
ful to himself than it is to the patient, who ig- 
norantly expecteth him to work miracles when 



disease and medicine. 101 

he can only bring to his aid the patient attention 
of an experienced and carefully educated man. 
Yea, ofttimes, in order to satisfy the unreason- 
ing patient, who indeed is usually most wi^sl 
tient, he hath to hold language which savoureth 
more of the charlatan than of the wise and cau- 
tious examiner of nature, and thus may lose 
credit in the eyes of the better instructed, while 
he is applying himself to the calming of an un- 
easy mind, which fevereth the body the more 
from the not well knowing what it hath to 
dread. 

It is an ill finish to a thing in itself good, that 
the division and subdivision of labour which in 
later times hath produced so much excellence in 
arts mechanical, hath been carried also into 
learned professions and sciences, wherein such 
minute division is not profitable, but the con- 
trary thereof. For each man applying himself 
with eagerness to his own particular calling, 
doth thereupon conclude that others do the like ; 
and thus imagineth that he may trust them for 
all those parts of science which pertain more 
immediately to their especial vocation: and thus 
he* seeketh not to inform, himself enough there- 
upon to be able to judge of the competence of 
him whose counsel he seeketh, be it physician 



102 Or EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 

or surgeon, lawyer or priest: albeit in his ca- 
pacity of a human being living in society, he be 
personally and deeply interested in all the ques- 
tions which these faculties do profess to treat of. 
Yet so little doth the applicant ofttimes know 
of his own affair, that he puzzleth his oracle. 
Thus a lawyer shall often be hard put to it, to 
gather from his client those points which chiefly 
bear upon his case; and the physician hath no 
less difficulty in detecting the symptoms which 
shall guide him to a true knowledge of the dis- 
ease : the ignorance of the patient thus hebeti- 
zing, as it were, the art of the doctor, by con- 
cealing, or forgetting, it may be, as a matter of 
no signification, the more important though per- 
haps less troublesome symptom, and detailing 
at inconvenient length what might well be 
passed over. Thus many a man hath become 
permanently insane because a headache, or a 
little more than usual watchfulness, are held to 
be things scarcely worth attention; and no me- 
dical aid is called in, or any remedy attempted, 
till the brain is so seriously diseased as probably 
to make all remedies vain. No year passeth 
wherein there is not some instance of suicide 
committed by persons who had for a time com- 
plained of headache, and seemed depressed in 



DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 103 

spirits; but whose friends, considering this to 
be a matter of no concernment, had paid slight 
heed thereto ; and only remembered it for their 
own advantage, as preventing the forfeiture of 
goods consequent on a verdict oifelo de se, in- 
stead of noting it for that of the sufferer, by 
taking measures for reducing that diseased ac- 
tion in the brain, which was indeed the cause 
of the pain first, and next of the insane self- 
destruction which followed. I do note therefore 
as an error of much evil consequence, the no- 
tion which some men have, that ignorance of 
every thing relating to anatomy and medicine 
is safe and even desirable, so long as some me- 
dical practitioner, no matter what his skill, may 
be within reach. 

I have seen this wilful ignorance carried yet 
farther, indeed to such a point that were it not 
so grave a matter, that a jest thereon would 
savour too much of levity, I could gather good 
matter for laughter thereout. For I remember 
once hearing it said by a lawyer of good ability, 
when speaking of a preacher whose church he 
frequented, " I have been told by persons who 
are judges of such things, that his sermons are 
very good. I cannot myself understand them, 
but that is not my business:" and yet this man 



104 OF EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 

was no scoffer, or despiser of sacred things; but 
he had seemingly considered the priest as a 
sort of commissary, paid, and bound by his 
engagement, to supply food for the souls of a 
certain district, the which if he did not furnish, 
it may be that the man of law, judging of an- 
other world by that part of this which was his 
chief concernment, imagined that there would 
be a legal remedy in the High Court of Heaven ; 
and haply, dreamed of an action for damages 
if, through negligence of the appointed teacher, 
he should be defrauded of his share of future 
happiness. 

Now if it be folly so to leave another to cater 
for our life eternal, as if misery could be borne 
by proxy, and we should suffer no loss provided 
the blame of the loss could bethrown on another; 
I think we must accuse him of a folly only lesser 
in degree than this one, who should so entirely 
trust another in regard to his bodily health, as 
to risk the losing it whilst hoping to restore it: 
for the lack of skill, or the lack of attention in 
him who is thus trusted, can neither be detected 
nor checked by a man wholly ignorant of his 
own frame and constitution, of the nature of the 
pharmaceutical preparations employed, of their 
probable effects, or of the benefit which the pre- 



DISEASE A^D MEDICINE. 105 

scriber expect eth that be will derive therefrom. 
The mere mistake of a chemist's boy may thus 
put his life to hazard, for he knoweth not what 
he swallow eth: or if the practitioner be unskil- 
ful, no mistake may be needed to increase the 
risk. Neither doth some scientifical acquaint- 
ance with these matters make a refractory or a 
hypochondriacal patient, as some profess to ap- 
prehend ; for quiet submission to our lot doth 
usually grow out of a rational knowledge of how 
far it may admit of amendment, how far it must 
be borne: and on the other hand, there is no 
obstinacy like that of ignorance, and no phan- 
tasm so difficult to remove as that which cannot 
be reasoned with. For though the imagination, 
when prseternaturally excited, may work won- 
ders through the influence exercised by the brain 
over the muscular fibre, by means of the nerves 
thence proceeding, yet is this but a sorry kind 
of curative process; seeing that it is uncertain, 
and will oftener be turned against the practi- 
tioner, than, may be, it can second him. 

There is no charlatan, how ridiculous soever 
may be his pretensions when tried by the light 
of sober reason, that doth not find his followers, 
even in this age of fancied enlightenment ; and 
those who consult this lying oracle shall many 



106 OP EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 

times be found, on inquiry, to be persons of very 
sufficient acuteness and good sense in their own 
vocation : yet the clearness of their intellect 
availeth them not in this matter, which is even 
of more concernment to comfort than either 
riches or greatness. But there is one class 
more especially the prey of such pretenders, vi- 
delicet, the female sex, who being, by the erro- 
neous notions in regard to the fitting education 
for a woman, kept, for the most part, in pro- 
found ignorance of every useful part of know- 
ledge, listen to and credit what is told them, 
because they have never been sufficiently in- 
doctrinated to be able to detect a fallacy either 
in science or argument. And yet, who needeth 
so much to know something of anatomy and 
pharmacy as they, who by their natural con- 
stitution are less fortified than the other sex 
against the assaults of disease ? 

Howmuchof the imprudence which incurreth 
sickness, and the waywardness which ill beareth 
it, would be prevented if men in their youth 
were taught to know so much of the human 
corporeal frame as to be able to measure their 
own powers, and neither over nor under task 
them ! For he who demandeth too much from 
his muscles or his brain, will strain, and damage 



DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 107 

them: but he who demandeth not enough, doth 
himself a yet more irreparable injury; for then 
they gain not their due development, and are 
unfit for use when the occasion calleth for their 
exertion. And indeed I must herein accuse 
those of mine own profession of some misappre- 
hension; for you shall find the medical attend- 
ant ofttimes deny his patient the use of books, 
or of writing or of such like amusement, as 
holding that this kind of occupation will fatigue, 
and thus retard the cure. Yet the same physi- 
cian will desire that the sick person shall be 
taken out of bed for refreshment, and ease of 
body, so soon as the severity of disease is some- 
what abated ; nay that, if possible, he shall be 
removed to another chamber for the sake of a 
fresher air than that contaminated by his own 
fevered breath. Hath then the brain no func- 
tion also which is to be attended to, in order to 
restore its healthy influence over the other 
parts ? Who among us hath not seen how much 
the discontents and griefs of the mind impair 
digestion, and interrupt the regular course of 
the circulation, with the due secretions there- 
from resulting ? And shall we imagine to re- 
store the patient by refusing amusement, and 
keeping him constantly pining under the sick- 



108 OF EEEOES IN BEGAKD TO 

ness of hope deferred, thinking of his sufferings 
because he hath nothing else to think of, and 
fevering himself with restless wishes for what 
he cannot have ? Leave him his book — he will 
read till he is weary, and then he will sleep. — » 
Suffer him to write — if his arm or his head ache 
in consequence, he will soon lay aside his pen 
and seek repose to fit himself to resume it ; and 
in mean time, if the symptoms be not very ur- 
gent, his sufferings will be forgotten, and the 
cheerfulness of health will return,, and aid the 
cure, it may be, more than all the drugs thou 
canst administer. 

When even a healthy man is put into soli- 
tary confinement, we have had good experience 
in sundry lamentable cases, that his bodily con- 
stitution sinketh under the unnatural state of 
mind thereby engendered. Wilt thou shut up 
one who is suffering already from sickness, and 
haply with no society save that of a stupid nurse, 
without any means of amusing his mind ? Shall 
he have no employment but the counting the 
beats of his fevered pulse, or the stripes or the 
flowers in the paper or bed-furniture, it may be ; 
or figuring horrid faces from shadows, — or the 
fancying landscapes in the veins of the marble 
chimneypiece, — or the gazing on some portrait, 



DISEASE AND MEDICINE. 109 

haply, till lie fancieth the eyes move, and he 
almost shrieketh at the frightful creation of his 
own phantasy. Is this the way to promote con- 
valescence ? My worthy brother, thou art but 
half a master of the healing art if thou hast 
never learned to bring the mind to aid in the 
body's cure. So mighty an agent existeth not 
in the whole round of natural causes; and thou 
mayest thank thy favourable stars if it be thy 
fate to find a patient who can and will mentally 
recreate himself during sickness ; for he will live 
by the force of intellectual activity, where the 
weak and desponding would sink and die. 

But methinks, I hear it said, "I do not deny 
my patients fitting amusement — they may read 
a novel — they may delectate themselves with 
the visits of the Apothecary, who will listen to 
all their complaints, and besides giving a large 
share of pity, will delight them with abundance 
of talk touching the news of the day." — But 
this is not the healthy exercise of the mind ; it 
is by forgetting ailments, not by talking about 
them, that the cure is promoted ; nor is it to 
be supposed that the idle desultory gossip of 
the neighbourhood, or the absorbing interest of 
a work of fiction, whose merit consists in the 
taking such hold of the imagination that it can- 



110 OF EEEOES EN" EEGAED TO 

not be dismissed at will; — furnish that train of 
gently consecutive and satisfactory reflections, 
which may soothe into quiet sleep : for the brain, 
suffering somewhat of the debility of the rest of 
the body, beareth not sudden jerks and disrup- 
tions of thought, but dehghteth in following one 
subject, or shifting into another by easy stages 
as it were. The delectations of the wise and 
good, therefore, dining illness are very different 
from the abovementioned, and we shall find that 
their favourite recreations will be the truths of 
science and of religion, the book of God's 
works, and the book of God's laws. These bring 
us into immediate communion with the Deity, 
and as the fabled Antseus gained fresh strength 
from touching his mother earth, so doth man — 
the son of the Highest, gain power from bring- 
ing his soul into contact with his Almighty 
Father. Earth and its concerns are so brief, 
so small, to him whose mind hath been thus 
employed, that even should the illness promise 
to be life-long, the thought bringeth no despon- 
dency. How can it do so to one who hath no 
mind to return to the paltry littleness of every 
day life ? Many a great mind hath matured in a 
sick room works which make it evident that the 
vigour of intellect — the light of heaven, it may 
be,beamingontheinward eye, — hath triumphed 



DISEASE AFD MEDICIKE. HI 

over the ills of the body. Oh leave the sick 
man his books ; leave him his lofty thoughts ; his 
hope that even in this seclusion he is not wholly 
useless ; his strong will, his upward aspirations / 
I remember some years ago visiting often an 
excellent man who had long been suffering se- 
verely, and whose age left small hope that he 
would ever recover health. He was wise enough 
to seek mental recreation, good enough to seek 
such as gave him peace and hope, nor shall I 
easily forget the animation which lighted up his 
pale face as he talked of his favourite pursuit. 
He had undertaken a critical translation of the 
gospels, and his delight when he could throw 
any new light on an obscure passage was bound- 
less. I asked him once how soon he should finish 
his work. " Never," was his answer ; " had I 
other pressing business to attend to, I might 
conclude this ; — but now, what can I have so 
soothing as this blessed book always before my 
eyes ? The desire to make my rendering more 
perfect, gives a definite object and a zest to all 
my other reading, and I am amused without 
losing sight of what I love. A work of fiction 
may serve to divert for an hour a fellow that 
hath never had an ache in his shoulders, but to 
one who hath little to enjoy in life save the hope 
of quitting it, there is no book like this. All 



112 OF EEEOES IN EEGAED TO 

others pall and weary, excepting as they connect 
themselves with the great end of man's being, 
and the foundation of his expectations. I sleep 
quietly when I finish the day in such guise." 
By thus giving, as he himself expressed it, a 
definite object to his excursive reading, it gained 
a sufficient interest to render the mind active : 
history, travels, philology, all bore in some way 
on his pursuit ; and it was pleasant to see the 
joyful and triumphant air with which he would 
sometimes hold up to me a book he had just 
purchased, exclaiming " I shall find something 
here for my work." To the day of his death he 
never ceased to retouch his darling translation. 
There is also another error which groweth 
out of, and is in a measure dependent on the 
notions which the learned in medicine have un- 
wittingly encouraged. You shall hear it given 
as a symptom of one disease that it causeth 
great depression of spirits, of another that it is 
attended by peculiar irritability of temper ; and 
so on through all the moods which suffering 
may be expected to produce in untaught or un- 
trained minds ; who, as a dog howleth when he 
is chained up, or snarleth and snappeth at any 
one who would administer relief to him when 
injured, yield to all animal emotions, and are 



DISEASE AND MEDICIITE. 113 

sad or gay as the course of the blood prompteth. 
But this, though alack ! it be a common, is yet 
by no means a necessary consequence of disease, 
and though the physician may need to know this 
when he hath to deal with ill regulated minds, 
he is wrong if he expect that this shall always 
be the case, and still more wrong if he assert 
it so to be. For thus shall he perchance, on the 
one hand, mistake hugely the case of one who 
hath so little of the animal in him that he will 
not howl when he is hurt ; and on the other 
encourage in weak minded persons the yielding 
to the impulses of peevishness and ill humour, as 
thinking them such natural consequences of dis- 
ease as to admit of no restraint : and thus haply 
the health of the attendant friends shall be more 
damaged by the weariness of trying to soothe 
one who thinketh he hath licence for his fret- 
fulness, than his who thus weareth out those 
who would minister to his comfort. Selfish- 
ness is an ugly vice at all times ; but sickness 
hath double horrors if the moral constitution 
be broken down as well as the bodily: for 
surely he must have more than ordinarily long 
legs who would think to step into the blessed- 
ness of heaven, from the querulous peevishness 
which hath made his sick room a hell, 
i. 



OF THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

AS TOUCHING THE 

FEMALE SEX. 

I SHOULD, I think, hardly satisfy my rea- 
ders, I am sure I should not satisfy myself, 
were I to conclude this my discourse without 
farther inquiry into those false opinions which I 
have already taken occasion to notice in a more 
"brief and cursory manner, with regard to the true 
position of women in society, as in this later age 
it is constituted. For herein it seemeth to me 
that many errors, bequeathed to us by our an- 
cestors, do continue to bear fruit of more bitter 
consequence than any that was plucked in 
Paradise, and as in that fault, albeit the woman 
may ofttimes be the agent in the evil, all do eat 
thereof to their great discomfort and detriment. 
"Wherefore I propose, good reader, to note some 
of these errors, their causes, and, according to 
my poor apprehension, their remedy also : so 
that, be thou male or female, thou shalt per- 



CONDITION OF THE FEMALE SEX. 115 

adventure find this inquiry not wholly useless 
to thy present instruction and future good. 

The first step of such an inquiry must be set 
very far back, for as the first scene in the drama 
of human existence was laid in Eden, so we must 
take that for our starting point : since there, if 
ever, we shall find what is the true relation of 
the sexes in society. Arid if it be said that 
both forfeited their claim to that true relation 
when they quitted that sweet garden; be it re- 
membered that in all the dealings of God with 
man since that time, the object of his dispensa- 
tions has been the reinstatement of his erring 
children in the same, yea even in a better state 
than that which, their animal and sensual nature 
tempted them for a time to abandon : there- 
fore we do properly fulfil his will, and advance 
his kingdom, by endeavouring to ascertain that 
true and pristine state, and, as far as in us lieth, 
to restore it. 

Woman then in Paradise was the independent 
companion and help-mate of man ; for where 
food was to be had for the plucking, she had no 
lack of other strength than she possessed to aid 
her in the procuring it; and where she had no 
enemies, she needed no protection. The aid 
therefore which she could lend, or receive, could 



116 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

only be that spiritual and intellectual assistance 
which, human creatures are ever prone to seek 
from each other ; since finite beings always hope 
to gain something more of the infinite by gather- 
ing to themselves the intellectual possessions of 
others as well as their own. And if, as I conceive, 
the somewhat more delicate organization, and 
larger proportionate brain of woman, doth give 
her, cceteris paribus, the advantage of quicker 
perception, and greater promptitude in mental 
operation, we may well opine that she was "a 
help meet for man" in all wherein he needed 
help, but answerable for her conduct to God 
alone, from whom she had received the good 
gift of reason, and freedom to use it. Would 
we then indeed return to our pristine happiness, 
and enjoy the comfort of that interchange of 
mental pleasures which was destined for man as 
a species, we should return also towards that 
pristine state of things. But how standeth the 
case now? Population presseth hard, in this 
long settled country, on the means of subsist- 
ence, and woman hath daily more and more to 
learn the lesson that she is but the female of 
that species, the law of whose nature is labour : 
for the first fault ha vrng been that of the animal 



AS TOUCHING- THE EEMALE SEX. 117 

part, Grod by his merciful decree (loving, even 
in reproof,) weakened its influence, by requiring 
from it enough of toil to keep it in subjection to 
the higher and better rule of the rational soul. 
Such thenbeingthe natural state of the human 
race, food being made essential to life, and labour 
requisite to the procurance of food, is the posi- 
tion of woman in society such, either by law or 
custom, as to enable her to comply with that law 
which was given for such good purpose, and 
which no human customs or human decrees can 
supersede ? Is she, by custom and law, allowed 
to labour for the means of support, or if she hath 
acquired it, to keep it ? and if she be not, what 
good reason hath society to give for so glaring an 
injustice ? A woman may marry, I shall be told, 
and then the husband will maintain her. He 
who answereth thus knoweth that he answereth 
not truly. "Where subsistence is hard to be 
won, if the woman bringeth nothing to the com- 
mon stock, marriage is often impracticable, un- 
less for a fool that looketh not to the future ; and 
many a woman must remain single for the lack 
of this world's goods: many more would remain 
single rather than sell their persons for food and 
raiment, — for a mercenary marriage is but a 



118 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

market transaction, — if they had any means of 
honourable labour whereby to eat bread, the 
sweeter for being that of independence. 

Why then should we longer stave off the put- 
ting the question which sooner or later must be 
asked? — Women are found dying of inanition, 
unable to obtain the wherewith to still the pangs 
of hunger — why is this ? — Why is suicide, why is 
crime the hopeless resort of her who in common 
parlance, though not in common usage, is held 
to be the cherished companion and "better half" 
of man ? This question hath never yet received 
a satisfactory answer, and haply some may be 
found to flout at mine, though indeed mockery 
be no refutation. I reply that woman's position 
in society is a false one; that healthy, not ex- 
cessive labour being the law of our existence, 
she hath nevertheless been either debarred from 
using it to good purpose, or else doomed to 
endure it in crushing excess, by defective 
teaching, which hath obliged her to labour 
with her hands rather than her head ; — by un- 
natural restraints ; — by idle or ill maxims : — and 
when man striveth to overturn the law of God 
and nature, he is apt to make wild work of it ; 
and, like the builders of Babel, to find that the 
fabric he hath sought to raise will remain to 



AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 119 

future generations but a ruinous monument of 
his own folly. 

Let us not any longer disguise facts : from the 
moment that a female child is born into the world 
she is subjected to an unjust inequality by the 
laws of this realm: she cannot exercise or enjoy 
the rights of a free citizen, even if her lot have 
fallen in fair pasture, and her father having left 
her wherewith to live, she hath remained single 
and kept it. If she marry, her very individual 
existence is merged in that of her husband; the 
property that she hath in possession is taken 
from her, or placed peradventure in the hands 
of trustees, by whose negligence or fraud it is 
often wasted; and if she afterwards obtain any 
thing by labour or inheritance, it is not hers, 
but her husband's : nay she is no longer con- 
sidered even as a rational and individual agent 
in the eyes of the law. 

Nor is public opinion more just : — go into a 
school for poor children where the males are 
receiving such an education as may fit them for 
clerks and shopmen, bailiffs or gardeners : and 
if thou remark on the incomplete instruction 
afforded to the female children, the reply will be 
— "The gentlemen say it is good enough for 
girls." — G-o a step or two higher: ye shall find 



120 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

that the father keepeth his daughters ignorant 
of business ; for why should they be taught what 
they will never have occasion to exercise ? and 
if he sometimes think that after his death they 
may be destitute, he endeavoureth that they 
shall have two or three showy accomplishments, 
and even those insufficiently taught them, that 
they may take the situation of a governess ; and 
thus the would-be-teachers soon come to be more 
numerous than the scholars that need them. 
Look higher yet : science and philosophy are 
held to be "unfeminine ;" and those that call for 
a better system of teaching shall be mockingly 
asked, " Would ye make female professors ?" 

What then remaineth for a woman who must 
eat, and hath no one to give her bread ? — She 
may toil with her needle. — What sort of mainte- 
nance this is, late inquiries have shown : she 
may work sixteen hours out of the twenty -four, 
or perhaps all the night as well as all the day, 
and when she hath ruined health and eyesight, 
find that she still hath not wherewith to live : 
or she may go out as a. governess if she can ob- 
tain that office, even for no better remuneration 
than her board, or starve when she cannot : or 
she may enter upon a course of sin and shame 
if she be young and handsome ; or commit 



AS TOTJCHEfG- THE FEMALE SEX. 121 

suicide if this fail her. Is this the boon that 
fathers give their daughters? — Did the law give 
women the rights of free citizenship, parents 
would take care that their female, as well as their 
male children shouldreceive such an education as 
should enable them to administer their affairs ; 
or if fathers gave their daughters a better educa- 
tion, the law would probably view women with 
more favour; but by thus arguing in a vicious 
circle, refusing women their rights because they 
are held unable to exercise them, and then deny- 
ing them a useful education because they have 
no rights to exercise, we inflict unmerited suffer- 
ings on a large portion of our species, and render 
those idle and adulatory sayings which are ad- 
dressed to women in the heyday of their youth 
and beauty, the cruellest of all mockeries. 

Give the female the same chance as the male, 
let her mind be strengthened by study, and her 
body by exercise; let her see what the world is 
upon whose mercies she is to be cast; and if the 
care of the law have left her any one right in 
this so-named free country, let her learn to use 
it, in order to obtain truer justice for her sex 7 
that the next generation may not find crime, 
starvation, or suicide, the three alternatives 
offered for the acceptance of those whom the 



122 condition or SOCIETY 

world prateth to of "woman's proper sphere," — 
nor if strong moral feeling hath eschewed vice, 
and absolute, bitter, biting want hath unsettled 
the brain, be told that the wild endeavour to 
exchange the lingering pangs of hunger for a 
speedier death is a punishable offence:- — a 
lunatic asylum, not a prison, is for the most 
part the proper place for such offenders. 

When the fanaticism of a past age sent human 
beings to the stake, a few pounds of gunpowder 
to tie about the neck, was held a charitable gift, 
which kind hearts, more merciful than the laws, 
offered to the sufferer. Yea our own holy 
martyrs, Ridley and Latimer, disdained not 
such aid: but when a woman is doomed, by this 
hard hearted and false judging age, to die by 
the lingering torture of want, magistrates and 
judges refuse the coup de grace, and insist that 
the suffering shall be borne unabridged, out of 
an assumed concern for the souls of those 
whose bodies have been left to perish. 

Far be it from me to countenance that rash 
impatience of life which leadeth man to cut 
short the span which Grod hath assigned to him: 
but if, by harshness or neglect, we so embitter 
the existence of some wretched being, that in 
spite of the instinctive love of life, it is found a 



AS TOrOHING THE FEMALE SEX. 123 

burthen too heavy to be endured longer; who 
ought to bear the blame of the sin? The laws 
and customs which cause the evil, or the un- 
happy woman, whose brain, reeling under the 
repeated shocks of suffering; or of remorse — if 
hunger have been staved off by sin; — perpe- 
trateth an act of violence on herself, whereof 
it is for God, not man, to take cognizance ? 

If indeed the numbers of the nation exceed 
its means of subsistence, let the evil be boldly 
met: the world is wide, and other lands can 
offer soil to till when England overfloweth : but 
let both sexes be placed in a situation to struggle 
fairly with the difficulty. It is mean, it is hypo- 
critical, to disguise the secret wish to mono- 
polize all profitable employment, underthe show 
of a tender concern for the best interests of 
" the weaker sex." If we indeed feel that such 
rivals hi the counting-house, the mart, or the 
lecture-room, would endanger the subsistence of 
men, while enabling women to maintain them- 
selves; let us at least boldly avow it, and de- 
vise a remedy openly. Throw open then the 
field of intellectual labour: let the female be 
taught to lighten the toil of the body by the 
work of the mind: teach her the skill of arith- 
metic; — what is there in the work of a book 



124 CONDITION OP SOCIETY 

keeper which she might not well and profitably 
discharge ? open to her the wells of ancient lite- 
rature and modern science, and when they are 
open, forbid her not to drink thereof herself, 
and to draw thence enough to quench the thirst 
of others also. Ye will not have a female pro- 
fessor, forsooth; but do ye not sit and applaud 
night after night while actresses address crowded 
theatres? May a woman repeat the words of 
others in public, but not repeat her own? May 
she exhibit her person on the stage in such 
dances as are there performed, and not exhibit 
an experiment in chemistry ? May she sing 
idle lays to hundreds, but not speak wisdom to 
them? And is this the boasted care which 
public opinion taketh of female morals? 

It might be matter for longer discourse than 
I have space for, were I closely to examine, and 
trace back to their causes in every instance, the 
evils here noted: but a few of these causes it 
may be well to state briefly. And foremost 
among these standeth the inferiority of the wo- 
man in regard to physical strength; the which, 
when many tribes of the great human family 
(from some of which tribes we of this realm 
are descended) became rude and barbarous, and 
warred often for then hunting grounds, or found 



AS TOTJCEXN'G THE FEMALE SEX. 125 

it more to their taste to seize the goods of 
others, than to labour for themselves, — did 
make females in great measure dependent on 
the stronger sex for support : and dependence 
among rude nations hath many of the charac- 
ters of slavery. During the season of semi- 
barbarism which succeeded to this, after Eng- 
land had become a settled kingdom under the 
Teuton races, the code whereon our common 
as well as much of our statute law is founded, 
was established ; and hereon was grafted, not 
long after, the Norman feudality ; whereby war- 
like suit and service became the main title to 
property, and the king's legislative council con- 
sisted of such only as held fiefs : for in those 
days the church also was militant in the worst 
sense of the word, and the bishop had his vas- 
sals, and parcelled out his land in knights' fees. 
At the period when William of Warenne could 
cast his sword upon the table when called upon 
to prove the title to his estate, and that wise 
and stronghanded monarch, Edward, the first 
of that name, found himself obliged to submit 
to this glaive law; it is clear that the female 
sex had very small chance of obtaining any re- 
gard to their rights as human beings : for the 
rude warrior of that day recognised no right in 



126 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

any who had not a sword wherewith to main- 
tain it. The wife of a baron was a part of 
his state, his daughter a part of his property: 
learning he had none of himself, and he needed 
none in his companion. 

The churchman, the only man in those days 
who had any skill in letters, was doomed to a 
life of celibacy by the asceticism which had cor- 
rupted the simplicity of Christianity : therefore 
he sought for no " help meet for him" in his 
studies ; and knew nothing of any females but 
either such as were shut away from all liberal 
science within the walls of a convent, or such 
as ministered only to his baser animal needs: 
and this ascetic rule, which held that a saint 
was disgraced by the very society which his 
mild Master sought and loved, added the finish- 
ing stroke to woman's degradation. The war- 
rior despised the feeble hand that could not 
wield the lance, but he also sometimes pitied 
and cherished the weak woman who clung to 
him for protection : it was reserved for a cor- 
rupted religious faith to take from her even her 
self respect ; to banish her foot from the holiest 
spots; to esteem her touch defilement! — yea 
woman, whose courage had braved the terrors 
of Jewish prejudice straining law to destroy the 



AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 127 

innocent, and, despite of priests and rulers, fol- 
lowed to the cross Him whom all but his gentle 
woman-like disciple John had forsaken or for- 
sworn, — was held an unclean creature by those 
who professed to be His servants. There is a 
tale told of a certain Quaker who having been 
bitten by a dog, apostrophized him thus — " I 
will not kill thee, but I will give thee a bad 
name" — and he raised the cry of " bad dog" 
which being soon mistaken for " mad," the 
poor beast was hunted till he became mad in 
good earnest : and thus woman, when an ill 
name had been given her at first, however un- 
deservedly, became subject to treatment which 
ofttimes caused her at last to deserve it. 

A different age hath now arisen ; but it is so 
much the instinct of man to do again what he 
hath been accustomed to do and to see done, 
that old habits and opinions still make a stout 
fight for the upper hand, and yield only inch by 
inch to the pressure of the times. But never- 
theless they do yield, and it is therefore at this 
time especially, that such an inquiry as I have 
endeavoured to institute is likely to be useful. 
The world hath been so constituted by its Crea- 
tor, that in all the relations of life man must 
still find woman by his side; and by that com- 



128 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

panionship he must be influenced for the better 
or the worse : how much all might be benefited 
were that influence always for the better, I will 
not here undertake to conjecture, but this I do 
know, that where a man findeth in a wife, or 
a daughter, or a sister, the real "help meet for 
him," he enjoy eth a reduplication of his mental 
and even bodily powers ; and by her loving la- 
bour and sweet companionship findeth his toils 
and cares so lightened of their weight, that he 
would almost wish to have them for the sake of 
finding them so dexterously and gently shared 
and soothed. In this therefore, as in all other 
things, the doer of injustice findeth, like him 
whoswingetha flail unskilfully, that itreturneth 
on his own head with the more force, the greater 
the strength he hath exerted; and man, by his 
injustice to woman, hath lost much of that 
solace and help which was designed for him by 
his Creator. And it might be matter for curious 
remark on the constitution of human nature, 
that the injustice is now done rather as a matter 
of habit than for any good reason : for no one 
in this age will maintain that either man or 
woman is disqualified for parts of trust or ho- 
nour by the lack of physical strength, or warlike 



AS TOUCHING THE EEMALE SEX. 129 

skill : neither in this reformed church will any 
man hold himself defiled by the society of 
womankind. Nay, in matters of science and 
literature, if a woman have courage enough to 
brave the flouting of fools, and the opposition of 
relations, and gain erudition in spite of the out- 
cry raised against woman's learning, — when she 
hath at last achieved fame, her labours will also 
give her consideration in society. But it is a 
false and a bad social state when what is riglit 
to do, is not also honourable to do. When 
God hath given intellect, and an immortal soul 
to be guided and prepared for its better state 
by the use thereof, we sin against our Creator 
if we set human prejudice higher than God's 
law. "In Christ there is neither male nor 
female, bond nor free." 

But herein, nevertheless, prejudice holdeth its 
own, maugre God's will : for law and custom 
having debarred females from profitable employ- 
ment, a father looketh only to the fitting his 
daughters for the market, seeing he can no other- 
wise rid himself of the charge of their mainte- 
nance than by shifting the onus from his own 
shoulders to those of a husband : and for this 
cause he holdeth that a form which may capti- 

K 



130 CONDITION OF SOCIETY 

vate some roving fancy in the dance, is of more 
value than those qualities which may make the 
possessor useful, and consequently happy: there- 
fore female children are right early taught that 
the care of the o^side is of more consequence 
than that of the in : and that if the surface of 
the cranium he daintily ornamented, it matters 
not what may he the state of the "brain beneath 
it. If such teaching bear its natural fruit, what 
is the wonder ? One who hath for fifteen years 
been taught that the catching of a husband is 
the great business of life, and who hath to set 
before her eyes what is to please man rather 
than G-od, — when she hath succeeded in her 
chace, affordeth small comfort to the prisoner 
she hath taken : who may be ruined by her 
extravagance, deprived of his peace by her ill- 
humour, or disgraced by her misconduct. 

I have stated these matters roundly, and 
roughly, for doth not the chirurgeon need to use 
rough and sharp remedies when a gangrene is 
spreading in the body ? and this, the gangrene 
of the body social, requireth something of the 
like treatment : for what hath been the custom 
for any long* time, hath a kind of prescriptive 
right in men's minds ; and ye shall often find it 



AS TOUCHING THE FEMALE SEX. 131 

a hard matter to prevail on men to see that 
they have no rational ground for their prac- 
tice, so much is it become hallowed by age. 

Reader, I now bid thee farewell ! — If thou be 
a father, lay to thine inmost heart the dread 
truth that Grod will require at thy hands the 
immortal souls which he hath bestowed on thee, 
for their nurture in the way of life ; and remem- 
ber that the making thy sons fierce and quar- 
relsome, by way of being "manly," and thy 
daughters idle and useless, under the notion that 
they will thereby become more "feminine," is 
not the part of a man who hath a denizen of the 
world of spirits entrusted to his training for 
good or for evil. If thou be a woman, forget 
not, — albeit, my lesson may sound harsh to flat- 
tered ears, — that thou wert not sent into this 
world to waste thy hours in indolent repose ; that 
every human being hath his allotted work, and 
that since God hath not seen fit to tell any one 
beforehand what that work will be, he must pre- 
pare lihnself by anxious culture in all directions, 
to execute it well when the task is assigned. 
Though bred to the expectation of riches, the 
hour may eome*when thou wilt find thy learning 
thy only dower ; but whether that hour come or 



132 CONDITION OF THE FEMALE SEX. . 

not, one far more certain will yet arrive ; that, 
namely, wherein we must give an account of 
every wasted minute and idle word ; — look to it 
then, that Time shall pay good interest in 
Eternity. 



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